an essay on gun violence

5 Essays about Gun Violence

Gun violence impacts every part of society. There are certain places in the world where it’s more prevalent. According to a 2018 report, the United States had the 28th highest rate of gun violence deaths in the world. That puts the US above other wealthy countries. Gun violence is also a major issue in places like the Caribbean, Central America, and Venezuela. Here are five essays that address the financial and emotional impact of gun violence, how people use art to cope, and how the problem can be addressed.

“What Does Gun Violence Really Cost?”

Mark Follman, Julia Lurie, Jaeah Lee, and James West

This article opens with the story of a woman and her fiance shot on their way to dinner. After being close to death and staying in a hospital for five months, Jennifer Longdon couldn’t move her body from the chest down. After more hospitalizations, the bills got close to $1 million in just the first year, forcing her to file for personal bankruptcy. More expensive hospital stays followed for problems like sepsis, while wheelchair modifications for her house added up, as well.

For many people, their knowledge of gun violence comes from the news or movies. These venues tend to focus on the moment the violence occurs or the emotional impact. The long-term financial consequences as a result of health issues are less known. This article examines the existing data while telling a personal story.

“I Think of People Who Died At Sandy Hook Every Day”

Mary Ann Jacob

In this essay from 2016, Mary Ann Jacob remembers the horrific elementary school shooting from 2012. She worked at the library at the time and recalls hearing shouting from the intercom on the morning of December 14. Believing someone had pushed it by mistake, she called in, only to have the secretary answer the phone and shout, “There’s a shooter!” Mary Ann Jacob lived through one of the deadliest school shootings in US history. The essay goes on to describe what happened after and the steps survivors took to advocate for better gun control.

“You May Not See Me On TV, But Parkland Is My Story, Too”

Kyrah Simon

In 2018, a gunman at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School killed 17 students and wounded 17 others. Several students became vocal afterwards, challenging the lack of gun control in the face of such violence. They founded an advocacy group and many of the young people became household names. Kyrah Simon, a senior at the school, lost one of her best friends. She also wanted to speak up and share her story but realized that the media wanted certain speeches, certain faces. She writes, “I was just a girl that lost her friend. And it wasn’t enough.” Raw, honest, and enlightening, this personal essay is a must-read.

“Mexican Artist Transforms 1,527 Deadly Guns Into Life-Giving Shovels To Plant Trees”

In Culiacan, Mexico, the city with the highest rate of deaths by gun violence in the country, an artist and activist began a special project. Pedro Reyes used local media and TV ads paid for by the city’s botanical garden to advertise his gun-trading project. In exchange for bringing their weapons, people received electronics and appliances coupons. Reyes made over 1,500 trades. What came next? The guns were crushed by a steamroller and melted down. Reyes used the material to create shovels. He made the same number of shovels as guns, so each gun was represented as something new.

Turning guns into art is not an uncommon action. Reyes has also made instruments while other artists make sculptures. The transformation of an object of death into something that plays a part in fostering life – like planting trees – sends a powerful message.

“Forum: Doing Less Harm”

David Hemenway

What is the best approach to gun violence? David Hemenway, a professor of health policy and director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center and Harvard Youth Violence Prevention Center, advocates for a public-health approach. He believes gun violence is a public-safety problem and a problem-health problem, but gun lobbyists dismiss both claims. The gun lobby focuses on the shooter – the individual – so attention is diverted from the firearms industry. In focusing so much on who to blame, prevention is left out of the equation.

A public-health approach returns the attention to prevention and asks everyone to work together on the issue. Hemenway uses motor-vehicle injury prevention as a blueprint for why gun violence prevention can work. Not sure what prevention could look like? Hemenway provides examples of how actors like healthcare workers, consumers, and the federal government can work together.

Learn about the consequences of gun violence in America and which interventions are most effective to reduce gun violence in homes, schools and communities!

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About the author, emmaline soken-huberty.

Emmaline Soken-Huberty is a freelance writer based in Portland, Oregon. She started to become interested in human rights while attending college, eventually getting a concentration in human rights and humanitarianism. LGBTQ+ rights, women’s rights, and climate change are of special concern to her. In her spare time, she can be found reading or enjoying Oregon’s natural beauty with her husband and dog.

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Article Contents

Introduction, the burden of firearm violence, understanding and reducing firearm violence is complex and multi-factorial, interventions and recommendations, conclusions, research ethics.

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Firearm Violence in the United States: An Issue of the Highest Moral Order

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Chisom N Iwundu, Mary E Homan, Ami R Moore, Pierce Randall, Sajeevika S Daundasekara, Daphne C Hernandez, Firearm Violence in the United States: An Issue of the Highest Moral Order, Public Health Ethics , Volume 15, Issue 3, November 2022, Pages 301–315, https://doi.org/10.1093/phe/phac017

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Firearm violence in the United States produces over 36,000 deaths and 74,000 sustained firearm-related injuries yearly. The paper describes the burden of firearm violence with emphasis on the disproportionate burden on children, racial/ethnic minorities, women and the healthcare system. Second, this paper identifies factors that could mitigate the burden of firearm violence by applying a blend of key ethical theories to support population level interventions and recommendations that may restrict individual rights. Such recommendations can further support targeted research to inform and implement interventions, policies and laws related to firearm access and use, in order to significantly reduce the burden of firearm violence on individuals, health care systems, vulnerable populations and society-at-large. By incorporating a blended public health ethics to address firearm violence, we propose a balance between societal obligations and individual rights and privileges.

Firearm violence poses a pervasive public health burden in the United States. Firearm violence is the third leading cause of injury related deaths, and accounts for over 36,000 deaths and 74,000 firearm-related injuries each year ( Siegel et al. , 2013 ; Resnick et al. , 2017 ; Hargarten et al. , 2018 ). In the past decade, over 300,000 deaths have occurred from the use of firearms in the United States, surpassing rates reported in other industrialized nations ( Iroku-Malize and Grissom, 2019 ). For example, the United Kingdom with a population of 56 million reports about 50–60 deaths per year attributable to firearm violence, whereas the United States with a much larger population, reports more than 160 times as many firearm-related deaths ( Weller, 2018 ).

Given the pervasiveness of firearm violence, and subsequent long-term effects such as trauma, expensive treatment and other burdens to the community ( Lowe and Galea, 2017 ; Hammaker et al. , 2017 ; Jehan et al. , 2018 ), this paper seeks to examine how various evidence-based recommendations might be applied to curb firearm violence, and substantiate those recommendations using a blend of the three major ethics theories which include—rights based theories, consequentialism and common good. To be clear, ours is not a morally neutral paper wherein we weigh the merits of an ethical argument for or against a recommendation nor is it a meta-analysis of the pros and cons to each public health recommendation. We intend to promote evidence-based interventions that are ethically justifiable in the quest to ameliorate firearm violence.

It is estimated that private gun ownership in the United States is 30% and an additional 11% of Americans lived with someone who owed a gun in 2017 ( Gramlich and Schaeffer, 2019 ). Some of the reported motivations for carrying a firearm include protection against people (anticipating future victimization or past victimization experience) and hunting or sport shooting ( Schleimer et al. , 2019 ). A vast majority of firearm-related injuries and death occur from intentional harm (62% from suicides and 35% from homicides) versus 2% of firearm-related injuries and death occurring from unintentional harm or accidents (e.g. unsafe storage) ( Fowler et al. , 2015 ; Lewiecki and Miller, 2013 ; Monuteaux et al. , 2019 ; Swanson et al. , 2015 ).

Rural and urban differences have been noted regarding firearms and its related injuries and deaths. In one study, similar amount of firearm deaths were reported in urban and rural areas ( Herrin et al. , 2018 ). However, the difference was that firearm deaths from homicides were higher in urban areas, and deaths from suicide and unintentional deaths were higher in rural areas ( Herrin et al. , 2018 ). In another study, suicides accounted for about 70% of firearm deaths in both rural and urban areas ( Dresang, 2001 ). Hence, efforts to implement these recommendations have the potential to prevent most firearm deaths in both rural and urban areas.

The burden of firearm injuries on society consists of not only the human and economic costs, but also productivity loss, pain and suffering. Firearm-related injuries affect the health and welfare of all and lead to substantial burden to the healthcare industry and to individuals and families ( Corso et al. , 2006 ; Tasigiorgos et al. , 2015 ). Additionally, there are disparities in firearm injuries, whereby firearm injuries disproportionately affect young people, males and non-White Americans ( Peek-Asa et al. , 2017 ). The burden of firearm also affects the healthcare system, racial/ethnic minorities, women and children.

Burden on Healthcare System

Firearm-related fatalities and injuries are a serious public health problem. On average more than 38 lives were lost every day to gun related violence in 2018 ( The Education Fund to Stop Gun Violence (EFSGV), 2020 ). A significant proportion of Americans suffer from firearm non-fatal injuries that require hospitalization and lead to physical disabilities, mental health challenges such as post-traumatic stress disorder, in addition to substantial healthcare costs ( Rattan et al. , 2018 ). Firearm violence and related injuries cost the U.S. economy about $70 billion annually, exerting a major effect on the health care system ( Tasigiorgos et al. , 2015 ).

Victims of firearm violence are also likely to need medical attention requiring high cost of care and insurance payouts which in turn raises the cost of care for everyone else, and unavoidably becomes a financial liability and source of stress on the society ( Hammaker et al. , 2017 ). Firearm injuries also exert taxing burden on the emergency departments, especially those in big cities. Patients with firearm injuries who came to the emergency departments tend to be overwhelmingly male and younger (20–24 years old) and were injured in an assault or unintentionally ( Gani et al. , 2017 ). Also, Carter et al. , 2015 found that high-risk youth (14–24 years old) who present in urban emergency departments have higher odds of having firearm-related injuries. In fact, estimates for firearm-related hospital admission costs are exorbitant. In 2012, hospital admissions for firearm injuries varied from a low average cost of $16,975 for an unintentional firearm injury to a high average cost of $32,237 for an injury from an assault weapon ( Peek-Asa et al. , 2017 ) compared with an average cost of $10,400 for a general hospital admission ( Moore et al. , 2014 ).

Burden on Racial/Ethnic Minorities, Women and Children

Though firearm violence affects all individuals, racial disparities exist in death and injury and certain groups bear a disproportionate burden of its effects. While 77% of firearm-related deaths among whites are suicides, 82% of firearm-related deaths among blacks are homicides ( Reeves and Holmes, 2015 ). Among black men aged 15–34, firearm-related death was the leading cause of death in 2012 ( Cerdá, 2016 ). The racial disparity in the leading cause of firearm-related homicide among 20- to 29-year-old adults is observed among blacks, followed by Hispanics, then whites. Also, victims of firearms tend to be from lower socioeconomic status ( Reeves and Holmes, 2015 ). Understanding behaviors that underlie violence among young adults is important. Equally important is the fiduciary duty of public health officials in creating public health interventions and policies that would effectively decrease the burden of gun violence among all Americans regardless of social, economic and racial/ethnic backgrounds.

Another population group that bears a significant burden of firearm violence are women. The violence occurs in domestic conflicts ( Sorenson and Vittes, 2003 ; Tjaden et al. , 2000 ). Studies have shown that intimate partner violence is associated with an increased risk of homicide, with firearms as the most commonly used weapon ( Leuenberger et al. , 2021 ; Gollub and Gardner, 2019 ). However, firearm threats among women who experience domestic violence has been understudied ( Sullivan and Weiss, 2017 ; Sorenson, 2017 ). It is estimated that nearly two-thirds of women who experience intimate partner violence and live in households with firearms have been held at gunpoint by intimate partners ( Sorenson and Wiebe, 2004 ). Firearms are used to threaten, coerce and intimidate women. Also, the presence of firearms in a home increases the risk of women being murdered ( Campbell et al. , 2015 ; Bailey et al. , 1997 ). Further, having a firearm in the home is strongly associated with more severe abuse among pregnant women in a study by McFarlane et al. (1998) . About half of female intimate partner homicides are committed with firearms ( Fowler, 2018 ; Díez et al. , 2017 ). Some researchers reported that availability of firearms in areas with fewer firearms restrictions has led to higher intimate partner homicides ( Gollub and Gardner, 2019 ; Díez et al. , 2017 ).

In the United States, children are nine times more likely to die from a firearm than in most other industrialized nations ( Krueger and Mehta, 2015 ). Children here include all individuals under age 18. These statistics highlight the magnitude of firearm injuries as well as firearms as a serious pediatric concern, hence, calls for appropriate interventions to address this issue. Unfortunately, children and adolescents have a substantial level of access to firearms in their homes which contributes to firearm violence and its related injuries ( Johnson et al. , 2004 ; Kim, 2018 ). About half of all U.S. households are believed to have a firearm, making firearms one of the most pervasive products consumed in the United States ( Violano et al. , 2018 ). Consequently, most of the firearms used by children and youth to inflict harm including suicides are obtained in the home ( Johnson et al. , 2008 ). Beyond physical harm, children experience increased stress, fear and anxiety from direct or indirect exposure to firearms and its related injuries. These effects have also been reported as predictors of post-traumatic stress disorders in children and could have long-term consequences that persist from childhood to adulthood ( Holly et al. , 2019 ). Additionally, the American Psychological Association’s study on violence in the media showed that witnessing violence leads to fear and mistrust of others, less sensitivity to pain experienced by others, and increases the tendency of committing violent acts ( Branas et al. , 2009 ; Calvert et al. , 2017 ).

As evidenced from the previous sections, firearm violence is a complex issue. Some argue that poor mental health, violent video games, substance abuse, poverty, a history of violence and access to firearms are some of the reasons for firearm violence ( Iroku-Malize and Grissom, 2019 ). However, the prevalence and incidence of firearm violence supersedes discrete issues and demonstrates a complex interplay among a variety of factors. Therefore, a broader public health analysis to better understand, address and reduce firearm violence is warranted. Some important factors as listed above should be taken into consideration to more fully understand firearm violence which can consequently facilitate processes for mitigation of the frequency and severity of firearm violence.

Lack of Research Prevents Better Understanding of Problem of Firearm Violence

A major stumbling block to understanding the prevalence and incidence of firearm related violence exists from a lack of rigorous scientific study of the problem. Firearm violence research constitutes less than 0.09% of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s annual budget ( Rajan et al. , 2018 ). Further research on firearm violence is greatly limited by the Dickey Amendment, first passed in 1996 and annually thereafter in budget appropriations, which prohibits use of federal funds to advocate or promote firearm control ( Rostron, 2018 ). As such, the Dickey Amendment impedes future federally funded research, even as public health’s interest in firearm violence prevention increased ( Peetz and Haider, 2018 ; Rostron, 2018 ). In the absence of rigorous research, a deeper understanding and development of evidence-based prevention measures continue to be needed.

Lack of a Public Health Ethical Argument Against Firearm Use Impedes Violence Prevention

We make an argument that gun violence is a public health problem. While some might think that public health is primarily about reducing health-related externalities, it is embedded in key values such as harm reduction, social justice, prevention and protection of health and social justice and equity ( Institute of Medicine, 2003 ). Public health practice is also historically intertwined with politics, power and governance, especially with the influence of the states decision-making and policies on its citizens ( Lee and Zarowsky, 2015 ). According to the World Health Organization, health is a complete physical, mental and social well-being that is not just the absence of injury or disease ( Callahan, 1973 ). Health is fundamental for human flourishing and there is a need for public health systems to protect health and prevent injuries for individuals and communities. Public health ethics, then, is the practical decision making that supports public health’s mandate to promote health and prevent disease, disability and injury in the population. It is imperative for the public health community to ask what ought to be done/can be done to curtail firearm violence and its related burdens. Sound public health ethical reasoning must be employed to support recommendations that can be used to justify various public policy interventions.

The argument that firearm violence is a public health problem could suggest that public health methods (e.g. epidemiological methods) can be used to study gun violence. Epidemiological approaches to gun violence could be applied to study its frequency, pattern, distribution, determinants and measure the effects of interventions. Public health is also an interdisciplinary field often drawing on knowledge and input from social sciences, humanities, etc. Gun violence could be viewed as a crime-related problem rather than public health; however, there are, of course, a lot of ways to study crime, and in this case with public health relevance. One dominant paradigm in criminology is the economic model which often uses natural experiments to isolate causal mechanisms. For example, it might matter whether more stringent background checks reduce the availability of guns for crime, or whether, instead, communities that implement more stringent background checks also tend to have lower rates of gun ownership to begin with, and stronger norms against gun availability. Therefore, public health authorities and criminologists may tend to have overlapping areas of expertise aimed to lead to best practices advice for gun control.

Our paper draws on three major theories: (1) rights-based theories, (2) consequentialism and (3) the common good approach. These theories make a convergent case for firearm violence, and despite their significant divergence, strengthen our public health ethics approach to firearm. The key aspects of these three theories are briefly reviewed with respect to how one might use a theory to justify an intervention or recommendation to reduce firearm injuries.

Rights-Based Theories

The basic idea of the rights framework is that people have certain rights, and that therefore it is impermissible to treat people in certain ways even if doing so would promote the overall good. People have rights to safety, security and an environment generally free from risky pitfalls. Conversely, people also have a right to own a gun especially as emphasized in the U.S.’s second amendment. Another theory embedded within our discussion of rights-based theories is deontology. Deontological approaches to ethics hold that we have moral obligations or duties that are not reducible to the need to promote some end (such as happiness or lives saved). These duties are generally thought to specify what we owe to others as persons ( rights bearers ). There are specific considerations that define moral behaviors and specific ways in which people within different disciplines ought to behave to effectively achieve their goals.

Huemer (2003) argued that the right to own a firearm has both a fundamental (independent of other rights) and derivative justification, insofar as the right is derived from another right - the right to self-defense ( Huemer, 2003 ). Huemer gives two arguments for why we have a right to own a gun:

People place lots of importance on owning a gun. Generally, the state should not restrict things that people enjoy unless doing so imposes substantial risk of harm to others.

People have a right to defend themselves from violent attackers. This entails that they have a right to obtain the means necessary to defend themselves. In a modern society, a gun is a necessary means to defend oneself from a violent attacker. Therefore, people have a right to obtain a gun.

Huemer’s first argument could be explained that it would be permissible to violate someone’s right to own or use a firearm in order to promote some impersonal good (e.g. number of lives saved). Huemer’s second argument also justifies a fundamental right to gun ownership. According to Huemer, gun restrictions violate the right of individual gun owners to defend themselves. Gun control laws will result in coercively stopping people to defend themselves when attacked. To him, the right to self-defense does seem like it would be fundamental. It seems intuitive to argue that, at some level, if someone else attacks a person out of the blue, the person is morally required to defend themselves if they cannot escape. However, having a right to self-defense does not entail that your right to obtain the means necessary to that thing cannot be burdened at all.

While we have a right to own a gun, that right is weaker than other kinds of rights. For example, gun ownership seems in no way tied to citizenship in a democracy or being a member of the community. Also, since other nations/democracies get along fine without a gun illustrates that gun ownership is not important enough to be a fundamental right. Interestingly, the UK enshrines a basic right to self-defense, but explicitly denies any right to possess any particular means of self-defense. This leads to some interesting legal peculiarities where it can be illegal to possess a handgun, but not illegal to use a handgun against an assailant in self-defense.

In the United States, implementing gun control policies to minimize gun related violence triggers the argument that such policies are infringements on the Second Amendment, which states that the rights to bear arms shall not be infringed. The constitution might include a right to gun ownership for a variety of reasons. However, it is not clear from the text itself that the right to bear arms is supposed to be as fundamental as the right to freedom of expression. Further, one could argue, then, that any form of gun regulation is borne from the rationale to retain our autonomy. Protections from gun violence are required to treat others as autonomous agents or as bearers of dignity. We owe others certain protections and affordances at least in part because these are necessary to respect their autonomy (or dignity, etc.). We discuss potential recommendations to minimize gun violence while protecting the rights of individuals to purchase a firearm if they meet the necessary and reasonable regulatory requirements. Most of the gun control regulations discussed in this article could provide an opportunity to ensure the safety of communities without unduly infringing on the right to keep a firearm.

Consequentialism

Consequentialism is the view that we should promote the common good even if doing so infringes upon some people’s (apparent) rights. The case for gun regulation under this theory is made by showing how many lives it would save. Utilitarianism, a part of consequentialist approach proposes actions which maximize happiness and the well-being for the majority while minimizing harm. Utilitarianism is based on the idea that a consequence should be of maximum benefit ( Holland, 2014 ) and that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness as the ultimate moral norm. If one believes that the moral purpose of public health is to make decisions that will produce maximal benefits for most affected, remove or prevent harm and ensure equitable distribution of burdens and benefits ( Bernheim and Childress, 2013 ), they are engaging in a utilitarian theory. Rights, including the rights to bear arms, are protected so long as they preserve the greater good. However, such rights can be overridden or ignored when they conflict with the principle of utility; that is to say, if greater harm comes from personal possession of a firearm, utilitarianism is often the ethical theory of choice to restrict access to firearms, including interventions that slow down access to firearms such as requiring a gun locker at home. However, it is important to note that utilitarians might also argue that one has to weigh how frustrating a gun locker would be to people who like to go recreationally hunting. Or how much it would diminish the feeling of security for someone who knows that if a burglar breaks in, it might take several minutes to fumble while inputting the combination on their locker to access their gun.

Using a utilitarian approach, current social statistics show that firearm violence affects a great number of people, and firearm-related fatalities and injuries threaten the utility, or functioning of another. Therefore, certain restrictions or prohibitions on firearms can be ethically justifiable to prevent harm to others using a utilitarian approach. Similarly, the infringement of individual freedom could be warranted as it protects others from serious harm. However, one might argue that a major flaw in the utilitarian argument is that it fails to see the benefit of self-defense as a reasonable benefit. Utilitarianism as a moral theory would weigh the benefits of proposed restrictions against its costs, including its possible costs to a felt sense of security on the part of gun owners. A utilitarian argument that neglects some of the costs of regulations wouldn’t be a very good argument.

One might legitimately argue that if an individual is buying a firearm, whether for protection or recreation, they are morally responsible to abide by the laws and regulations regarding purchasing that firearm and ensuring the safety of others in the society. Additionally, vendors and licensing/enforcement authorities would have the responsibility to ensure the safety of the rest of the society by ensuring that the firearm purchase does not compromise the safety of the community. Most people who own firearms would not argue against this position. However, arguments in support of measures that will reduce the availability of firearms center around freedom and liberty and are not as well tolerated by those who argue from a libertarian starting point. Further, this would stipulate that measures against firearm purchase or use impinge upon the rights of individuals who have the freedom to pursue what they perceive as good ( Holland, 2014 ). However, it seems as though the state has a fundamental duty to help ensure an adequate degree of safety for its citizens, and it seems that the best way to do that is to limit gun ownership.

Promoting the Common Good

A well-organized society that promotes the common good of all is to everyone’s advantage ( Ruger, 2015 ). In addition, enabling people to flourish in a society includes their ability to be healthy. The view of common good consists of ensuring the welfare of individuals considered as a group or the public. This group of people are presumed to have a common interest in protection and preservation from harms to the group ( Beauchamp, 1985 ). Health and security are shared by members of a community, and guns are an attempt to privatize public security and safety, and so is antithetical to the common good. Can one really be healthy or safe in a society where one’s neighbors are subject to gun violence? Maybe not, and so then this violence is a threat to one’s life too. If guns really are an effective means of self-defense, they help one defend only oneself while accepting that others in one’s community might be at risk. One might also argue that the more guns there are, the more that society accepts the legitimacy of gun ownership and the more that guns have a significant place in culture etc., and consequently, the more that there is likely to be a problem.

Trivigno (2018) suggests that the willingness to carry a firearm indicates an intention to use it if the need arises and Branas et al (2009) argue that perpetually carrying a firearm might affect how individuals behave ( Trivigno, 2018 ; Branas et al. , 2009 ). When all things are equal, will prudence and a commitment to the flourishing of others prevail? Trivigno (2013) wonders if such behaviors as carrying or having continual access to a firearm generates mistrust or triggers fear of an unknown armed assailant, allowing for aggression or anger to build; the exact opposite of flourishing ( Trivigno, 2013 ). One could suggest, then, that the recreational use of firearms is also commonly vicious. Many people use firearms to engage in blood sport, killing animals for their own amusement. For example, someone who kicks puppies or uses a magnifying glass to fry ants with the sun seems paradigmatically vicious; why not think the same of someone who shoots deer or rabbits for their amusement?. Firearm proponents might suggest that the fidelity (living out one’s commitments) or justice, which Aristotle holds in high regard, could justify carrying a firearm to protect one’s life, livelihood, or loved ones insofar as it would be just of a person to defend and protect the life of another or even one’s own life when under threat by one who means to do harm. Despite an argument justifying the use of a firearm against another for self-defense after the fact, the action might not have been right when evaluated through the previous rationale, or applying the doctrine of double effect as described by Aquinas’ passage in the Summa II-II, which mentions that self-defense is quite different than taking it upon one’s self to mete out justice ( Schlabach, n.d. ). The magistrate is charged with seeing that justice is done for the common good. At best, if guns really are an effective means of self-defense, they help one defend only oneself while accepting that others in one’s community might be at risk. They take a common good, the health and safety of the community, and make it a private one. For Aquinas and many other modern era ethicists, intention plays a critical part in judgment of an action. Accordingly, many who oppose any ownership of firearms do so in both a paternalistic fashion (one cannot intend harm if they don’t have access to firearms) and virtuous fashion (enabling human flourishing).

Classical formulations of the double doctrine effect include necessity and proportionality conditions. So, it’s wrong to kill in self-defense if you could simply run away (without giving up something morally important in doing so), or to use deadly force in self-defense when someone is trying to slap you. One thing the state can do, in its role of promoting the common good, is to reduce when it is necessary to use self-defense. If there were no police at all, then anyone who robs you without consequence will probably be back, so there’s a stronger reason to use deadly force against them to feel secure. That’s bad, because it seems to allow violence that truly isn’t necessary because no one is providing the good of public security. So, one role of the state is to reduce the number of cases in which the use of deadly force is necessary for our safety. Since most homicides in the United State involve a firearm, one way to reduce the frequency of cases in which deadly force is necessary for self-defense is to reduce the instances of gun crime.

We have attempted to lay the empirical and ethical groundwork necessary to support various interventions, and the recommendations aimed at curbing firearm violence that will be discussed in this next section. Specifically, by discussing the burden of the problem in its various forms (healthcare costs, disproportionate violence towards racial/ethnic minority groups, women, children, vulnerable populations and the lack of research) and the ethics theories public health finds most accessible, we can now turn our attention to well-known, evidence-based recommendations that could be supported by the blended ethics approach: rights-based theories, consequentialism and the common-good approach discussed.

Comprehensive, Universal Background Checks for Firearm Sales

Of the 17 million persons who submitted to a background check to purchase or transfer possession of a firearm in 2010, less than 0.5% were denied approval of purchase ( Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2014 ). At present, a background check is required only when a transfer is made by a licensed retailer, and nearly 40% of firearm transfers in recent years were private party transfers ( Miller et al. , 2017 ). As such, close to one-fourth of individuals who acquired a firearm within the last two years obtained their firearm without a background check ( Miller et al. , 2017 ). Anestis et al. , (2017) and Siegel et al. , (2019) evaluated the relationship between the types of background information required by states prior to firearm purchases and firearm homicide and suicide deaths ( Anestis et al. , 2017 ; Siegel et al. , 2019 ). Firearm homicide deaths appear lower in states checking for restraining orders and fugitive status as opposed to only conducting criminal background checks ( Sen and Panjamapirom, 2012 ). Similarly, suicide involving firearm were lower in states checking for a history of mental illness, fugitive status and misdemeanors ( Sen and Panjamapirom, 2012 ).

Research supports the evidence that comprehensive universal background checks could limit crimes associated with firearms, and enforcement of such laws and policies could prevent firearm violence ( Wintemute, 2019 ; Lee et al. , 2017 ). Comprehensive, universal background check policies that are applicable to all firearm transactions, including private party transfers, sales by firearm dealers and sales at firearm shows are justifiable using a blend of the ethics theories we have previously discussed. With the rights-based approach, one could still honor the right to own a firearm by a competent person while also enforcing the obligation of the firearm vendor to ensure only a qualified individual purchased the firearm. To further reduce gun crime, rather than ensure only the right people own guns, we can just reduce the number of guns owned overall. Consequentialism could be employed to ensure the protection of the most vulnerable such as victims of domestic violence and allowing a firearm vendor to stop a sale to an unqualified individual if they had a history of suspected or proven domestic violence. Also, having universal background checks that go beyond the bare minimum of assessing if a person has a permit, the legally required training, etc., but delving more deeply into a person’s past, such as the inclusion of a red flag ( Honberg, 2020 ), would be promoting the common good approach by creating the conditions for persons to be good and do good while propelling community safety.

Renewable License Before Buying and After Purchase of Firearm and Training Firearm Owners

At present, federal law does not require licensing for firearm owners or purchasers. However, state licensing laws fall into four categories: (1) permits to purchase firearms, (2) licenses to own firearms, (3) firearm safety certificates and (4) registration laws that impose licensing requirements ( Anestis et al. , 2015 ; Giffords Licensing, n.d. ). A study conducted in urban U.S. counties with populations greater than 200,000 indicated that permit-to-purchase laws were associated with 14% reduction in firearm homicides ( Crifasi et al. , 2018 ). In Connecticut, enforcing a mandatory permit-to-purchase law making it illegal to sell a hand firearm to anyone who did not have an eligible certificate to purchase firearms was associated with a reduction in firearm associated homicides ( Rudolph et al. , 2015 ). This also resulted in a significant reduction in the rates of firearm suicide rates in Connecticut ( Crifasi et al. , 2015 ). Conversely, the permit-to-purchase law was repealed in Missouri in 2007, which resulted in an increase of homicides with firearms and firearm suicides ( Crifasi et al. , 2015 ; Webster et al. , 2014 ). Similarly, two large Florida counties indicated that 72% of firearm suicides involved people who were legally permitted to have a firearm ( Swanson et al. , 2016 ). According to the study findings, a majority of those who were eligible to have firearms died from firearm-related suicide, and also had records of previous short-term involuntary holds that were not reportable legal events.

In addition to comprehensive, universal background checks for firearm purchases, licensing with periodic review requires the purchaser to complete an in-person application at a law enforcement agency, which could (1) minimize fraud or inaccuracies and (2) prevent persons at risk of harming themselves or others to purchase firearms ( Crifasi et al. , 2019 ). Subsequent periodic renewal could further reduce crimes and violence associated with firearms by helping law enforcement to confirm that a firearm owner remains eligible to possess firearms. More frequent licensure checks through periodic renewals could also facilitate the removal of firearms from individuals who do not meet renewal rules.

Further, including training on gun safety and shooting with every firearm license request could also be beneficial in reducing gun violence. In Japan, if you are interested in acquiring a gun license, you need to attend a one-day gun training session in addition to mental health evaluation and background check ( Alleman, 2000 ). This training teaches future firearm owners the steps they would need to follow and the responsibilities of owning a gun. The training completes with passing a written test and achieving at least a 95% accuracy during a shooting-range test. Firearm owners need to retake the class and initial exam every three years to continue to have their guns. This training and testing have contributed to the reduction in gun related deaths in Japan. Implementing such requirements could reduce gun misuses. Even though, this is a lengthy process, it could manage and reduce the risks associated with firearm purchases and will support a well-regulated firearm market. While some may argue that other forms of weapons could be used to inflict harm, reduced access to firearms would lead to a significant decrease in the number of firearm-related injuries in the United States.

From an ethics perspective, again, all three theories could be applied to the recommendation for renewable licenses and gun training. From a rights-based perspective, renewable licensure and gun training would still allow for the right to bear arms but would ensure that the right belongs with qualified persons and again would allow the proper state agency to exercise its responsibility to its citizens. Additionally, a temporary removal of firearms or prohibiting firearm purchases by people involuntarily detained in short-term holds might be an opportunity to ensure people’s safety and does so without unduly infringing on the Second Amendment rights. Renewable licenses and gun training create opportunities for law enforcement to step in periodically to ascertain if a licensee remains competent, free from criminal behavior or mental illness, which reduces the harm to the individual and to the community—a tidy application of consequentialism. Again, by creating the conditions for people to be good, we see an exercise of the common good.

Licensing Firearm Dealers and Tracking Firearm Sales

In any firearm transfer or purchase, there are two parties involved: the firearm vendor and the individual purchaser. Federal law states that “it shall be unlawful for any person, except for a licensed importer, licensed manufacturer, or licensed dealer, to engage in the business of importing, manufacturing, or dealing in firearms, or in the course of such business to ship, transport, or receive any firearm in interstate or foreign commerce” (18 U.S.C. 1 922(a)(1)(A)(2007). All firearm sellers must obtain a federal firearm license issued by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). However, ATF does not have the complete authority to inspect firearm dealers for license, revoke firearm license, or take legal actions against sellers providing firearms to criminals ( Vernick and Webster, 2007 ). Depending on individual state laws, typically the firearm purchaser maintains responsibility in obtaining the proper license for each firearm purchase whereas the justice system has the responsibility to enforce laws regulating firearm sales. Firearm manufacturers typically sell their products through licensed distributors and dealers, or a primary market (such as a retail store). Generally, firearms used to conduct a crime (including homicide) or to commit suicide are the product of secondary markets ( Institute of Medicine, 2003 ) such as retail secondhand sales or private citizen transfers/sales. Such secondary firearm transfers are largely unregulated and allow for illegal firearm purchases by persons traditionally prohibited from purchasing in the primary market ( Vernick and Webster, 2007 ; Chesnut et al. , 2017 ).

According to evidence from Irvin et al. (2014) in states that require licensing for firearm dealers and/or allow inspections, the reported rates of homicides were lower ( Irvin et al. , 2014 ). Specifically, after controlling for race, urbanicity, poverty level, sex, age, education level, drug arrest rate, burglary rates and firearm ownership proxy, the states that require licensing for firearm dealers reported ~25% less risk of homicides, and the states that allow inspection reported ~35% less risk of homicides ( Irvin et al. , 2014 ). This protective effect against homicides was stronger in states that require both licensing and inspections compared to states that require either alone. The record keeping of all firearm sales is important as it facilitates police or other authorized inspectors to compare a dealer’s inventory with their records to identify any secondary market transactions or other discrepancies ( Vernick et al. , 2006 ). According to Webster et al. (2006) , a change in firearm sales policy in the firearm store that sold more than half of the firearms recovered from criminals in Milwaukee, resulted in a 96% reduction in the use of recently sold firearms in crime and 44% decrease in the flow of new trafficked firearms in Milwaukee ( Webster et al. , 2006 ).

The licensing of firearm vendors and tracking of firearm sales sits squarely as a typical public health consequentialist argument; in order to protect the community, an individual’s right is only minimally infringed upon. An additional layer, justifiable by consequentialism, includes a national repository of all firearm sales which can be employed to minimize the sale of firearms on the secondary market and dealers could be held accountable for such ‘off-label’ use ( FindLaw Attorney Writers, 2016 ). Enforcing laws, mandating record keeping, retaining the records for a reasonable time and mandating the inspection of dealers could help to control secondary market firearm transfers and minimize firearm-related crimes and injuries.

One could argue from a rights perspective that routine inspections and record keeping are the responsibility of both firearms vendors and law enforcement, and in doing so, still ensure that competent firearm owners can maintain their rights to bear arms. In Hume’s discussion of property rights, he situates his argument in justice; and that actions must be virtuous and the motive virtuous ( Hume, 1978 ). Hume proposes that feelings of benevolence don’t form our motivation to be just. We tend (perhaps rightly) to feel stronger feelings of benevolence to those who deserve praise than to those who have wronged us or who deserve the enmity of humanity. However, justice requires treating the property rights or contracts of one’s enemies, or of a truly loathsome person, as equally binding as the property rights of honest, decent people. Gun violence disproportionately impacts underserved communities, which are same communities impacted by social and economic injustice.

Standardized Policies on Safer Storage for Firearms and Mandatory Education

Results from a cross-sectional study by Johnson and colleagues showed that about 14-30% of parents who have firearms in the home keep them loaded, while about 43% reported an unlocked firearm in the home ( Johnson et al. , 2006 ; Johnson et al. , 2008 ). The risk for unintentional fatalities from firearms can be prevented when all household firearms are locked ( Monuteaux et al. , 2019 ). Negligent storage of a firearm carries various penalties based on the individual state ( RAND, 2018 ). For example, negligent storage in Massachusetts is a felony. Mississippi and Tennessee prohibit reckless or knowingly providing firearms to minors through a misdemeanor charge, whereas Missouri and Kentucky enforce a felony charge. Also, Tennessee makes it a felony for parents to recklessly or knowingly provide firearms to their children ( RAND, 2018 ).

While a competent adult may have a right to bear arms, this right does not extend to minors, even in recreational use. Many states allow for children to participate in hunting. Wisconsin allows for children as young as 12 to purchase a hunting license, and in 2017 then Governor Scott Walker signed into law a no age minimum for a child to participate in a mentored hunt and to carry a firearm in a hunt when accompanied by an adult ( Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, 2020 ). The minor’s ‘right’ to use a firearm is due in part to the adult taking responsibility for the minor’s safety. As such, some have argued that children need to know how to be safe around firearms as they continue to be one of the most pervasive consumer products in the United States ( Violano et al. , 2018 ).

In addition to locking firearms, parents are also encouraged to store firearms unloaded in a safe locked box or cabinet to prevent children’s access to firearms ( Johnson et al. , 2008 ). It follows then that reducing children and youth’s access to firearm injuries involves complying with safe firearm storage practices ( McGee et al. , 2003 ). In addition to eliminating sources of threat to the child, it is also important for children to be trained on how to safely respond in case they encounter a firearm in an unsupervised environment. Education is one of the best strategies for firearm control, storage and reduction of firearm-related injuries via development of firearm safety trainings and programs ( Jones, 1993 ; Holly et al. , 2019 ). Adults also need firearm safety education and trainings; as such, inclusion of firearm safety skills and trainings in the university-based curriculum and other avenues were adults who use guns are likely to be, could also mitigate firearm safety issues ( Puttagunta et al. , 2016 ; Damari et al. , 2018 ). Peer tutoring could also be utilized to provide training in non-academic and social settings.

Parents have a duty to protect their children and therefore mandating safe firearm storage, education and training for recreational use and periodic review of those who are within the purview of the law. Given that someone in the U. S. gets shot by a toddler a little more frequently than once a week ( Ingraham, 2017 ), others might use a utilitarian argument that limiting a child’s access to firearms minimizes the possibility of accidental discharge or intentional harm to a child or another. Again, the common good approach could be employed to justify mandatory safe storage and education to create the conditions for the flourishing of all.

Firearm and Ammunition Buy-Back Programs

Firearm and ammunition buy-back programs have been implemented in several cities in the United States to reduce the number of firearms in circulation with the ultimate goal of reducing gun violence. The first launch in Baltimore, Maryland was in 1974. The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) has conducted a gun buy-back program for nearly eight years to remove more guns off the streets and improve security in communities. Currently there is a plan for a federal gun buy-back program in the United States. The objective of such programs is to reduce gun violence through motivating marginal criminals to sell their firearms to local governments, encourage law-abiding individuals to sell their firearms available for theft by would-be criminals, and to reduce firearm related suicide resulting from easy access to a gun at a time of high emotion ( Barber and Miller, 2014 ).

According to Kuhn et al. (2002) and Callahan et al. (1994) , gun buy-back programs are ineffective in reducing gun violence due to two main facts: 1- the frequently surrendered types of firearms are typically not involved in gun-related violence and 2- the majority of participants in gun buyback programs are typically women and older adults who are not often involved in interpersonal violence ( Kuhn et al. , 2002 ; Callahan et al. , 1994 ). However, as a result of implementation of the ‘‘good for guns’’ program in Worcester, Massachusetts, there has been a decline in firearm related injuries and mortality in Worcester county compared to other counties in Massachusetts ( Tasigiorgos et al. , 2015 ). Even though, there is limited research indicating a direct link between gun buy-back programs and reduction in gun violence in the United States, a gun buy-back program implemented in Australia in combination with other legislations to reduce household ownership of firearms, firearm licenses and licensed shooters was associated with a rapid decline in firearm related deaths in Australia ( Bartos et al. , 2020 ; Ozanne-Smith et al. , 2004 ).

The frequency of disparities in firearm-related violence, injuries and death makes it a central concern for public health. Even though much has been said about firearms and its related injuries, there continues to be an interest towards its use. Some people continue to desire guns due to fear, feeling of protection and safety, recreation and social pressure.

Further progress on reforms can be made through understanding the diversity of firearm owners, and further research is needed on ways to minimize risks while maximizing safety for all. Although studies have provided data on correlation between firearm possession and violence ( Stroebe, 2013 ), further research is needed to evaluate the interventions and policies that could effectively decrease the public health burden of firearm violence. Evidence-based solutions to mitigating firearm violence can be justified using three major public health ethics theories: rights-based theories, consequentialism and common good. The ethical theories discussed in this paper can direct implementation of research, policies, laws and interventions on firearm violence to significantly reduce the burden of firearm violence on individuals, health care systems, vulnerable populations and the society-at-large. We support five major steps to achieve those goals: 1. Universal, comprehensive background checks; 2. Renewable license before and after purchase of firearm; 3. Licensing firearm dealers and tracking firearm sales; 4. Standardized policies on safer storage for firearms and mandatory education; and 5. Firearm buy-back programs. For some of the goals we propose, there might be a substantial risk of non-compliance. However, we hope that through education and sensibilization programs, overtime, these goals are not met with resistance. By acknowledging the proverbial struggle of individual rights and privileges paired against population health, we hope our ethical reasoning can assist policymakers, firearm advocates and public health professionals in coming to shared solutions to eliminate unnecessary, and preventable, injuries and deaths due to firearms.

The conducted research is not related to either human or animal use.

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Gun Control Essay: Important Topics, Examples, and More

Gun Control Definition

Gun control refers to the regulation of firearms to reduce the risk of harm caused by their misuse. It is an important issue that has garnered much attention in recent years due to the increasing number of gun-related incidents, including mass shootings and homicides. Writing an essay about gun control is important because it allows one to explore the various aspects of this complex and controversial topic, including the impact of gun laws on public safety, the constitutional implications of gun control, and the social and cultural factors that contribute to gun violence.

In writing an essay on gun control, conducting thorough research, considering multiple perspectives, and developing a well-informed argument is important. This may involve analyzing existing gun control policies and their effectiveness, exploring the attitudes and beliefs of different groups towards firearms, and examining the historical and cultural context of gun ownership and use. Through this process, one can develop a nuanced understanding of the issue and propose effective solutions to address the problem of gun violence.

Further information on writing essays on gun control can be found in various sources, including academic journals, policy reports, and news articles. In the following paragraphs, our nursing essay writing services will provide tips and resources to help you write an effective and informative guns essay. Contact our custom writer and get your writing request satisfied in a short term.

Gun Control Essay Types

There are various types of essays about gun control, each with its own unique focus and approach. From analyzing the effectiveness of existing gun laws to exploring the cultural and historical context of firearms in society, the possibilities for exploring this topic are virtually endless.

Let's look at the following types and examples from our essay writing service USA :

• Argumentative Essay : This essay clearly argues for or against gun control laws. The writer must use evidence to support their position and refute opposing arguments.
• Descriptive Essay: A descriptive essay on gun control aims to provide a detailed topic analysis. The writer must describe the history and evolution of gun laws, the different types of firearms, and their impact on society.
• Cause and Effect Essay: This type of essay focuses on why gun control laws are necessary, the impact of gun violence on society, and the consequences of not having strict gun control laws.
• Compare and Contrast Essay: In this type of essay, the writer compares and contrasts different countries' gun laws and their effectiveness. They can also compare and contrast different types of guns and their impact on society.
• Expository Essay: This type of essay focuses on presenting facts and data on the topic of gun control. The writer must explain the different types of gun laws, their implementation, and their impact on society.
• Persuasive Essay: The writer of a persuasive essay aims to persuade the reader to support their position on gun control. They use a combination of facts, opinions, and emotional appeals to convince the reader.
• Narrative Essay: A narrative essay on gun control tells a story about an individual's experience with gun violence. It can be a personal story or a fictional one, but it should provide insight into the human impact of gun violence.

In the following paragraphs, we will provide an overview of the most common types of gun control essays and some tips and resources to help you write them effectively. Whether you are a student, a researcher, or simply someone interested in learning more about this important issue, these essays can provide valuable insight and perspective on the complex and often controversial topic of gun control.

Persuasive Essay on Gun Control

A persuasive essay on gun control is designed to convince the reader to support a specific stance on gun control policies. To write an effective persuasive essay, the writer must use a combination of facts, statistics, and emotional appeals to sway the reader's opinion. Here are some tips from our expert custom writer to help you write a persuasive essay on gun control:

• Research : Conduct thorough research on gun control policies, including their history, effectiveness, and societal impact. Use credible sources to back up your argument.
• Develop a thesis statement: In your gun control essay introduction, the thesis statement should clearly state your position on gun control and provide a roadmap for your paper.
• Use emotional appeals: Use emotional appeals to connect with your reader. For example, you could describe the impact of gun violence on families and communities.
• Address opposing viewpoints: Address opposing viewpoints and provide counterarguments to strengthen your position.
• Use statistics: Use statistics to back up your argument. For example, you could use statistics to show the correlation between gun control laws and reduced gun violence.
• Use rhetorical devices: Use rhetorical devices, such as metaphors and analogies, to help the reader understand complex concepts.

Persuasive gun control essay examples include:

• The Second Amendment does not guarantee an individual's right to own any firearm.
• Stricter gun control laws are necessary to reduce gun violence in the United States.
• The proliferation of guns in society leads to more violence and higher crime rates.
• Gun control laws should be designed to protect public safety while respecting individual rights.

Argumentative Essay on Gun Control

A gun control argumentative essay is designed to present a clear argument for or against gun control policies. To write an effective argumentative essay, the writer must present a well-supported argument and refute opposing arguments. Here are some tips to help you write an argumentative essay on gun control:

• Choose a clear stance: Choose a clear stance on gun control policies and develop a thesis statement that reflects your position.
• Research : Conduct extensive research on gun control policies and use credible sources to back up your argument.
• Refute opposing arguments: Anticipate opposing arguments and provide counterarguments to strengthen your position.
• Use evidence: Use evidence to back up your argument. For example, you could use data to show the correlation between gun control laws and reduced gun violence.
• Use logical reasoning: Use logical reasoning to explain why your argument is valid.

Examples of argumentative essay topics on gun control include:

• Gun control laws infringe upon individuals' right to bear arms and protect themselves.
• Gun control laws are ineffective and do not prevent gun violence.

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How to Choose a Good Gun Control Topic: Tips and Examples

Choosing a good gun control topic can be challenging, but with some careful consideration, you can select an interesting and relevant topic. Here are seven tips for choosing a good gun control topic with examples:

• Consider current events: Choose a topic that is current and relevant. For example, the impact of the pandemic on gun control policies.
• Narrow your focus: Choose a specific aspect of gun control to focus on, such as the impact of gun control laws on crime rates.
• Consider your audience: Consider who your audience is and what they are interested in. For example, a topic that appeals to gun enthusiasts might be the ethics of owning firearms.
• Research : Conduct extensive research on gun control policies and current events. For example, the impact of the Second Amendment on gun control laws.
• Choose a controversial topic: Choose a controversial topic that will generate discussion. For example, the impact of the NRA on gun control policies.
• Choose a topic that interests you: You can choose an opinion article on gun control that you are passionate about and interested in. For example, the impact of mass shootings on public opinion of gun control.
• Consider different perspectives: Consider different perspectives on gun control and choose a topic that allows you to explore multiple viewpoints. For example, the effectiveness of background checks in preventing gun violence.

You can also buy an essay online cheap from our professional writers. Knowing that you are getting high-quality, customized work will give you the peace of mind and confidence you need to succeed!

Pro-Gun Control Essay Topics

Here are pro-gun control essay topics that can serve as a starting point for your research and writing, helping you to craft a strong and persuasive argument.

• Stricter gun control laws are necessary to reduce gun violence in America.
• The Second Amendment was written for a different time and should be updated to reflect modern society.
• Gun control and gun safety laws can prevent mass shootings and other forms of gun violence.
• Owning a gun should be a privilege, not a right.
• Universal background checks should be mandatory for all gun purchases.
• The availability of assault weapons should be severely restricted.
• Concealed carry permits should be harder to obtain and require more rigorous training.
• The gun lobby has too much influence on government policy.
• The mental health of gun owners should be considered when purchasing firearms.
• Gun violence has a significant economic impact on communities and the nation as a whole.
• There is a strong correlation between high gun ownership rates and higher gun violence rates.
• Gun control policies can help prevent suicides and accidental shootings.
• Gun control policies should be designed to protect public safety while respecting individual rights.
• More research is needed on the impact of gun control policies on gun violence.
• The impact of gun violence on children and young people is a significant public health issue.
• Gun control policies should be designed to reduce the illegal gun trade and access to firearms by criminals.
• The right to own firearms should not override the right to public safety.
• The government has a responsibility to protect its citizens from gun violence.
• Gun control policies are compatible with the Second Amendment.
• International examples of successful gun control policies can be applied in America.

Anti-Gun Control Essay Topics

These topics against gun control essay can help you develop strong and persuasive arguments based on individual rights and the importance of personal freedom.

• Gun control laws infringe on the Second Amendment and individual rights.
• Stricter gun laws will not prevent criminals from obtaining firearms.
• Gun control laws are unnecessary and will only burden law-abiding citizens.
• Owning a gun is a fundamental right and essential for self-defense.
• Gun-free zones create a false sense of security and leave people vulnerable.
• A Gun control law will not stop mass school shootings, as these are often premeditated and planned.
• The government cannot be trusted to enforce gun control laws fairly and justly.
• Gun control laws unfairly target law-abiding gun owners and punish them for the actions of a few.
• Gun ownership is a part of American culture and heritage and should not be restricted.
• Gun control laws will not stop criminals from using firearms to commit crimes.
• Gun control laws often ignore the root causes of gun violence, such as mental illness and poverty.
• Gun control laws will not stop terrorists from using firearms to carry out attacks.
• Gun control laws will only create a black market for firearms, making it easier for criminals to obtain them.
• Gun control laws will not stop domestic violence, as abusers will find other ways to harm their victims.
• Gun control laws will not stop drug cartels and organized crime from trafficking firearms.
• Gun control laws will not stop gang violence and turf wars.
• Gun control laws are an infringement on personal freedom and individual responsibility.
• Gun control laws are often rooted in emotion rather than reason and evidence.
• Gun control laws ignore the important role that firearms play in hunting and sport shooting.
• More gun control laws will only give the government more power and control over its citizens.

Example Essays

Whether you have been assigned to write a gun control research paper or essay, the tips provided above should help you grasp the general idea of how to cope with this task. Now, to give you an even better understanding of the task and set you on the right track, here are a few excellent examples of well-written papers on this topic:

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Final Words

In conclusion, writing a sample rhetorical analysis essay requires careful analysis and effective use of persuasive techniques. Whether you are a high school student or a college student, mastering the art of rhetorical analysis can help you become a more effective communicator and critical thinker. With practice and perseverance, anyone can become a skilled writer and excel in their academic pursuits.

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Reducing gun violence: Stanford scholars tackle the issue

After 19 children and two teachers were slaughtered by a gunman at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, many Americans are asking, yet again, how to prevent future acts of senseless violence from occurring. What gun laws need to be changed? Why is it so difficult to pass regulations? How can Second Amendment rights be balanced with firearm safety? 

Stanford scholars have been studying these issues from a range of perspectives, including law, politics, economics, and medicine. Here are some of their findings.

Update: May 25, 2022: This story was originally published on Feb. 26, 2018, and has been updated to include new content.

Causes, impacts of gun violence

Uncovering the causes of gun violence has been a challenge, in part because research is limited by federal legislation that constrains research funding on the issue. Scholar Nigam Shah at the Stanford School of Medicine has written about how this has affected empirical study. But that has not deterred scholars from examining its impacts. David Studdert, also at the School of Medicine, has studied the devastating consequences of gun violence, particularly the risks it poses to public health.  

Maya Rossin-Slater, an associate professor of medicine and a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR), has also looked at the long-term impact of gun violence, specifically among American children who experienced a shooting at their school. Rossin-Slater found that they have higher rates of absenteeism, lower high school and college graduation rates, and by their mid-twenties, earn lower incomes.

Below is some of that research. 

Californians living with handgun owners more than twice as likely to die by homicide, study finds

Residents who don’t own a handgun but live with someone who does are significantly more likely to die by homicide compared with those in gun-free homes, research shows.

New study of gun violence in schools identifies long-term harms

Research from SIEPR’s Maya Rossin-Slater finds that students exposed to school shootings face “lasting, persistent” adversity in their educational and long-term economic outcomes.

Shirin Sinnar on the Buffalo shooting, hate crimes, and domestic terrorism

In the wake of the Buffalo shooting, Stanford Law School’s Shirin Sinnar discusses the scale of white supremacist violence in the U.S. and the rise of hate crimes.

Disconnect: The gap between gun violence and research in numbers

Gun violence is much discussed but little studied, largely due to federal decisions governing research funding. A new analysis highlights just how big the gap between the violence and our knowledge of it is. The answer? It’s huge.

Supporting students exposed to school shootings

Maya Rossin-Slater talks about her research into the mental health impact of severe school violence.

Panel discusses how shootings affect those unscathed by bullets

A panel of faculty members at the School of Medicine said shootings can affect the mental health of people close to the violence.

California handgun sales spiked after two mass shootings

In the six weeks after the Newtown and San Bernardino mass shootings, handguns sales jumped in California, yet there is little research on why – or on the implications for public health, according to a Stanford researcher.

Mass shootings: Public face of a much larger epidemic

While mass shootings have become the public face of gun violence, they account for less than 1% of the 40,000 firearm deaths each year.  

Short-term hospital readmissions for gun injuries cost $86 million a year

A study from Stanford researchers has found that readmissions account for 9.5% of the $911 million spent annually on gun-injury hospitalizations.

Supporting children through loss

Rabbi Patricia Karlin-Neumann talks about how to help young people experiencing grief.

Firearm injuries in children, teens costly for U.S. health care system, Stanford study finds

The average cost of initial hospitalization to treat pediatric gun injuries is about $13,000 per patient and has risen in recent decades, a Stanford Medicine study found.

Investigating psychiatric illnesses of mass shooters

Ira Glick and his collaborators studied the psychiatric state of 35 mass shooters in the United States who survived the incidents, which took place between 1982 and 2019.

The silent cost of school shootings

SIEPR’s Maya Rossin-Slater finds the average rate of antidepressant use among youths under age 20 rose by 21 percent in the local communities where fatal school shootings occurred.

New study analyzes recent gun violence research

Consensus is growing in recent research evaluating the impact of right-to-carry concealed handgun laws, showing that they increase violent crime, despite what older research says.

Handgun ownership associated with much higher suicide risk

Men who own handguns are eight times more likely to die of gun suicides than men who don’t own handguns, and women who own handguns are 35 times more likely than women who don’t.

Advice on how to cope with the threat of school shootings

Victor Carrion offers advice on how families can cope with the stress of school safety.

Reducing gun violence

Many Americans are demanding practical steps to reduce gun crime. One way is to have more stringent gun safety policies, such as legislation requiring guns to be stored safely, more stringent background checks, or as President Biden announced Tuesday, a federal ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. 

Research has shown that states with tighter policies save lives: One study by Stephanie Chao found that states with stricter gun laws have lower rates of gun deaths among children and teenagers, and states with child prevention access laws are linked with fewer gun suicides in this age group.

“If you put more regulations on firearms, it does make a difference,” said Chao, assistant professor of surgery and senior author of the study. “It does end up saving children’s lives.” Her analysis found that states with the strictest laws had a mortality rate of 2.6 per 100,000 and for states with the least strict laws, mortality rate was almost double at 5.0 per 100,000.  

John Donohue: One tragic week with two mass shootings and the uniquely American gun problem

In a Q&A, Stanford Law School gun law expert John J. Donohue III discusses mass shootings in the U.S., the challenges facing police when confronting powerful automatic weapons and the prospect of gun safety laws.

Lax state gun laws linked to more child gun deaths

States with strict gun laws have lower rates of gun deaths among children and teenagers, and laws to keep guns away from minors are linked with fewer gun suicides in this age group, a Stanford study found.

Improved gun buyer background checks would impede some mass shootings, Stanford expert says

Stanford Law Professor John Donohue says a background check system that was universal and effectively operated could impede gun acquisition by people who commit mass shootings.

How to solve more gun crimes without spending more money

Simple tweaks to how police process bullet casings could dramatically improve their forensic data.

Reducing civilian firepower would boost police and community safety, Stanford expert says

In addition to restricting the firepower a person can amass, Stanford law Professor John J. Donohue advocates efforts to build trust between communities and law enforcement agencies as a way to enhance both police and citizen safety.

Stricter gun laws reduce child and adolescent gun deaths, Stanford study finds

Laws that keep guns away from young people are especially strongly linked to lower rates of gun suicides in youth.

Gun legislation and policy

For nearly three decades, law Professor John Donohue III has studied what can be done to prevent gun violence in the United States. A lawyer and economist, Donohue explores how law and public policy are connected to gun violence, including how gun laws in the U.S. compare to other countries, as well as how legislation varies across the states, to better understand the effect that has on rates of violence. 

“The U.S. is by far the world leader in the number of guns in civilian hands,” Donohue explained . “The stricter gun laws of other ‘advanced countries’ have restrained homicidal violence, suicides and gun accidents – even when, in some cases, laws were introduced over massive protests from their armed citizens.” 

Here are some of his findings, and other research related to legislating gun safety in the U.S.

Stanford’s John Donohue on guns, mass shootings and the law in the U.S.

On Nov. 30, American students were once again the victims of a school shooting. Stanford law Professor John Donohue discusses the case and gun violence in the U.S.

How U.S. gun control compares to the rest of the world

While deaths from mass shootings are a relatively small part of the overall homicidal violence in America, they are particularly wrenching. The problem is worse in the U.S. than in most other industrialized nations. And it’s getting worse.

4 gun control steps U.S. needs now

John Donohue pens an opinion piece for CNN laying out four steps the United States should take to strengthen gun legislation.

Violent crime increases in right-to-carry states

Stanford Law School Professor John Donohue found that states that adopted right-to-carry concealed handgun laws have experienced a 13 to 15 percent increase in violent crime in the 10 years after enacting those laws.

Another mass shooting: An update on U.S. gun laws

In a Q&A, John Donohue discusses gun safety law and legislative developments.

Stanford GSE holds teach-in on research into gun violence in schools

Education scholars look at the evidence behind policy ideas to address school shootings.

Will Americans ever think differently about guns?

Stanford medicine and law professor David Studdert thinks more public health evidence is needed before cultural attitudes around gun safety and violence will change.

Introduction

• Why non-carceral community-based investments are key for preventing gun violence
• How state and local leaders are leveraging ARP funds to invest in non-carceral safety strategies
• Recommendations from the field: Maximizing ARP funds to promote holistic community safety

In June 2022, the most significant piece of gun violence prevention legislation in decades, the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act , became law. Alongside several common-sense gun regulations, the law allocates $250 million for community-based violence prevention initiatives—a promising step toward promoting safety through non-carceral and community-centered approaches. 1  

This federal action is important, but it only scratches the surface of what can be done to keep communities safe from gun violence. From investing in youth employment programs to revitalizing vacant lots to improving the quality of neighborhood housing, a wealth of community-based safety interventions are proven to reduce violent crime—including gun violence—in the places most impacted by it, and tackle the conditions of inequality that allow violence to concentrate in the first place. 2 But far too often, these community-based interventions are under-funded, particularly when compared to more punitive approaches. 3

Luckily, another source of federal aid can fund community-based safety investments: the American Rescue Plan’s (ARP) $350 billion in Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds. In addition to helping states and localities recover from the pandemic, the funds also provide local leaders with an unparalleled opportunity to address the public health crisis of gun violence. Indeed, President Joe Biden recently called on state and local leaders to use portions of this funding to address gun violence, including by “expanding evidence-based community violence intervention programs, and preventing crime by making our neighborhoods stronger with more educational and economic opportunities.” 4    

This research brief documents how state and local leaders are leveraging ARP funds to invest in non-carceral community-based safety initiatives; presents perspectives and case studies from leaders on-the-ground innovating on such strategies; and offers recommendations for how state and local leaders can maximize ARP funds to promote community safety prior to 2024 (when all funds must be obligated) and 2026 (when all funds must be spent). This is an unparalleled—and time-limited—window of opportunity, and states and localities should be thinking strategically right now about how to not only invest in proven strategies to reduce gun violence, but also promote life-affirming safety investments that  support thriving communities. 

Why non-carceral community-based investments are key for preventing gun violence 

Despite news headlines to the contrary, the U.S. is not in the midst of a crime wave . But it is experiencing an unprecedented and alarming increase in murders, driven largely by gun homicides. 5 Between 2019 and 2020, murder rates nationwide rose nearly 30%, while other forms of crime went down. 6 Since then, homicides, gun assaults, and other forms of violent crime have continued to trend upward, and as of June 2022, the homicide rate was 39% higher than it was prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. 7 For this reason, this brief focuses primarily on the role that community-based safety investments can play in addressing gun violence but it is important to note that these investments can also have broader impacts on public safety and community well-being.  

To understand the effectiveness of community-based safety investments, it helps to look at where most gun violence occurs. 8 Within cities and towns, gun violence is spatially concentrated—disproportionately occurring within a select set of high-poverty and disinvested neighborhoods, and within these neighborhoods, a select set of streets. 9  These are also the places where indicators of structural disadvantage (such as poverty, racial segregation, lower educational attainment, and high unemployment) cluster. 10 This pattern held during the recent nationwide increase in gun violence. 11   

The spatial concentration of violence stems from generations of policies and public and private investment decisions. Numerous studies have found a connection between state-sponsored racial segregation and gun violence, with the same places historically deemed unworthy of economic investment (through redlining) being more likely to be where gun violence concentrates today. 12 Research has also identified a link between concentrated poverty, densely crowded housing, and vacant buildings with higher rates of violent crime, including gun homicides. 13   

Given the many place-based factors that contribute to gun violence, there is growing recognition that just like improving public health in other ways, reducing gun violence requires addressing its social determinants and looking outside traditional systems (such as courts or hospitals) to tackle its root causes. 14   This approach is consistent with the preferences of survivors of violent crime, who overwhelmingly prefer investments in non-punitive crime prevention over criminal legal system responses. 15 As the John Jay College of Criminal Justice recently pointed out , this approach is also consistent with an emerging and growing body of research that elevates the effectiveness of non-carceral public safety investments that put communities at the center and builds their capacity to advance safety, health, and economic opportunity. 16  

The next section of this brief examines four categories of non-carceral community safety investments that ARP funds are being used for. Before introducing examples of investments in each category, we provide further empirical justification for specific investments within that category. But while the empirical evidence matters, the underlying moral argument does as well: Mass incarceration is not a morally acceptable solution to systemic disinvestment . 17 Local leaders should support non-carceral community safety interventions not only because they are effective, but because investing in struggling communities is the right thing to do. 

Methodology   This brief pulls from public data state and local governments reported to the U.S. Treasury Department regarding ARP spending. 18 We filtered projects by “Expense Category Group- 3-Services to Disproportionately Impacted Communities,” and further filtered by “Category-3.16-Social Determinants of Health: Community Violence Interventions.” 19 These filters, which Treasury has since recategorized as “Category 1 Public Health, 1.11 Community Violence Intervention,” document instances in which state and local leaders are purposefully aiming to reduce violence by addressing social determinants. We recognize that there are many more projects that are not coded as violence interventions that can still have an outsized impact in reducing violence, such as those designed to restore vacant lots or pilot universal basic incomes. However, we believe it is important to highlight how states and localities are explicitly thinking about violence prevention through community-centered approaches.   Within the Community Violence Intervention designation, we also filtered out funding allocated to victim services. While such projects are commendable and necessary, they are responses to violence, whereas our brief is concerned with interventions that prevent violence. Additionally, this brief focuses entirely on non-carceral safety uses of ARP funds, meaning we excluded uses that expand the reach of the criminal legal system (such as increasing the size of the police force or acquiring new public safety technology). The justification behind this approach is to highlight forward-looking and life-affirming visions of community safety, rather than carceral approaches that produce negative intergenerational consequences (such as mental health ramifications, family separation, poor educational performance, and racialized class stratification). 20 Finally, we conducted qualitative interviews with 14 government and civic leaders working at the state, county, and city level. 21 In selecting interviewees, we balanced attention to government and civil society and sought to center Black voices, particularly in localities with a large Black population.

How state and local leaders are leveraging ARP funds to invest in non-carceral safety strategies 

While the most straightforward uses of the American Rescue Plan’s State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds are to replace lost tax revenue or shore up general funds, the Treasury Department’s rules allow for a broad range of uses that “build a strong, resilient, and equitable recovery by making investments that support long-term growth and opportunity.” 22 Treasury also makes clear that community safety interventions are valid expenditure types for all communities, particularly those that have suffered an uptick in violence. 23 And as analysts at Civil Rights Corps , Alliance for Safety and Justice , the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities , and other organizations have pointed out, these flexible funds offer the largest-ever influx of federal dollars to support states and localities advance non-carceral interventions that promote a holistic vision of community safety. 24  

Below is a curated list of state and local investments in non-carceral community safety interventions, categorized along four key dimensions of community well-being. 25 While there are many more examples, our list represents a diverse set of locations with distinct approaches.  

Enhancing economic opportunity to promote safety 

A place’s economic health has a significant influence on its rates of violence; neighborhoods with higher poverty rates, unemployment, and income inequality have higher rates of violent crime. 26 On the other side of this relationship, a promising body of evidence demonstrates that by enhancing economic opportunity and reducing inequality within neighborhoods, places can significantly reduce crime. 27 For instance, evidence shows that youth workforce development and employment programs can reduce youth involvement in violent crime by as much as 45%. 28 Improving school quality has also been found to reduce violent crime arrests. 29 Finally, helping families avoid financial stress has been found to reduce crime and produce numerous other community benefits. 30   

Figure 1 illustrates how state and local governments are heeding this body of evidence and using ARP funds to advance community safety through economic mobility. For example, Illinois allocated $60 million investment toward youth employment programming, which subsidizes wages for high-risk youth and allows them to gain employability skills, participate in career development and apprenticeship programming, and receive wraparound services to address the root causes of employment barriers.  

Case study: How a small city in Virginia is using ARP funds to reduce violent crime through youth workforce development   Danville is a Black-majority (49%) city in southern Virginia with a population of approximately 42,000 . In 2016, it had the state’s highest per capita homicide rate , largely driven by gang-related violence . To tackle this, the city implemented a variety of community-centered programs to build trust in high-violence neighborhoods and prevent violence among at-risk youth. As Danville’s City Manager Ken Larking told us, “The best way to reduce crime is to prevent it and intervene before it happens.”  In 2020 (the year with the most recently reported data ), Danville saw a 50% reduction in violent crime from 2016. The city’s focus on prevention is also central to how it’s using ARP funds. Larking said that Danville is allocating funds on both “direct” violence prevention (including $236,000 on community violence initiatives) as well as “indirect” violence prevention, such as $1 million to address blight and additional grants to help residents of disinvested neighborhoods start businesses.   Of particular note is Project Imagine , a youth workforce development and violence prevention initiative that received $36,000 in ARP funding. Project Imagine provides gang-involved or at-risk youth with mentorship, apprenticeships, and employment opportunities, and enables former participants to become “ambassadors” who represent their neighborhoods in city meetings and provide input on the city’s strategic plan.  “One thing I knew coming into this city is that there was no voice from the Black community that was being heard,” Robert David, who leads Project Imagine, told us. When David was brought on in 2018, he had no staff or budget, but was able to access unused city funds from the federal Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act to begin offering paid jobs to youth. He also turned everyday community spaces into hubs to promote workforce development. “We made the barbershop a haven,” he said, noting when one of his outreach workers isn’t there, people will ask the barber, “Where’s my man with the jobs?”  The infusion of ARP funds has helped David hire permanent outreach workers to connect with more youth, which has since significantly increased enrollment in the initiative. The funds have also enabled him to acquire a permanent building for Project Imagine, which will serve as a safe drop-in space and community center for youth. 

Investing in the built environment and public health to promote safety  

The most consistent evidence on the relationship between violence prevention and place exists in the realm of the built environment. Numerous studies find that the renovation of housing, vacant buildings, land, and lots as well as efforts to add greenery and improve air quality significantly reduce violent crime. 31 These place-based strategies aim to counter decades of public and private disinvestment by revitalizing the physical environment and improving the health and safety of entire communities, rather than focusing on a sub-set of high-risk individuals (which many violence prevention programs, such violence interrupters, tend to focus on). 32 These interventions also align with a public health approach to preventing violence, which addresses the environmental factors that increase susceptibility to violence and advances protective environments that nurture safety, health, and well-being. 33 Examples range from addressing air pollution to increasing Medicaid coverage to expanding access to substance abuse and mental health treatment. 34  

Figure 2 highlights how state and local governments are using ARP funds to advance built environment improvements in communities and bolster public health system responses to community violence. For example, Chicago allocated ARP dollars to fund public realm improvements, building restorations, the preservation of safe and affordable housing, and the reactivation of city-owned land in the 15 areas with the highest rates of homicide and nonfatal shootings. 

It is important to note that while Figure 2 includes built environment and public health interventions explicitly categorized as “community violence interventions,” there are many other examples of state and local governments investing in built environment improvements that have the potential to prevent violence and are not categorized as such. These include city beautification and a revitalized community park in Milwaukee , streetlight repair in Los Angeles , and weatherization efforts to remove lead and mold in Washington, D.C . 35  

Case study: How Multnomah County, Ore. is taking a public health approach to violence prevention Multnomah County is home to Portland, Oregon’s most populous city. During the pandemic, gun violence in the city nearly tripled . In response to this sharp uptick and an over-burdened social service system, county officials allocated over $61 million of their ARP funds to violence prevention, including $4 million in public health approaches .    “We drew a one-to-one connection between the uptick and gun violence and the pandemic,” said Adam Renon, senior policy advisor to the Multnomah County chair. “The loss of social cohesion, the isolation, the breakdown of traditional society norms. So, we said, let’s use ARP funds to address that.” The county allocated $300,000 to hire “community health specialists” who provide families directly impacted by gun violence with safety plans and trauma support. An additional $1.2 million went toward creating a behavioral health response team of clinicians and peers to serve youth and families affected by gun violence. And the county expanded existing programs, including the Habilitation, Empowerment, Accountability, Therapy (H.E.A.T.) curriculum —a cognitive behavioral therapy program meant to address generational traumas for justice-involved people.    Raffaele Timarchi, policy advisor to the county chair, explained the importance of embedding public health approaches to violence prevention across multiple county departments: “[Just because] we take a public health approach to violence prevention doesn’t mean that all of our investments have to be in a public health department…We want to spread the tools of public health into these other departments, including people working at the community level.” This approach ran through Multnomah County’s ARP safety allocations, which included significant investments to strengthen communities through emergency rental assistance, community organization incubators, and a $4.8 million investment in direct assistance to help pay for residents’ pressing financial needs, including food, child care, transportation, and living expenses 

“We drew a one-to-one connection between the uptick and gun violence and the pandemic. The loss of social cohesion, the isolation, the breakdown of traditional society norms. So, we said, let’s use ARP funds to address that.” Adam Renon, Senior Policy Advisor, Multnomah County

Nurturing social cohesion to promote safety  

A significant body of evidence demonstrates that social cohesion and feelings of belonging to a neighborhood are associated with lower violent crime rates. 36 Research has also found that increasing the number of spaces for informal contact between neighbors (e.g., parks, community centers) is linked to a greater sense of safety for people in urban areas. 37 A growing body of evidence even indicates that creative placemaking can enhance community safety. 38

The evidence linking social cohesion with reduced violence forms the basis for many evidence-based community violence intervention programs, such as Cure Violence or Advance Peace , 39 which rely on community outreach to reach individuals in neighborhoods at the highest risk for violence. 40 These violence interrupting programs have contributed to significant declines in violence in high-crime neighborhoods in Richmond, Calif., Stockton, Calif., Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Baltimore, and others. 41  

Figure 3 highlights how state and local governments are using ARP funds to either invest in community violence interruption programs or in activities and programs that promote social cohesion. For example, Elkhart, Ind. is using ARP dollars to host summer events with music and food, present talks by credible messengers (e.g., people who have formerly been involved with the criminal legal system and now work in violence prevention), distribute anti-gun-violence yard signs, and provide COVID-19 information. Cincinnati is funding the Save Our Youth: Kings & Queens program, in which at-risk teens participate in a three-month program involving field trips and speakers focusing on Black history.  

Case study: How St. Louis is preventing violence by investing in safe youth spaces St. Louis is a midsized city (45.7% Black) with a population of roughly 300,000 . Even with a slight decline in 2021, St. Louis continues to have one of the highest homicide rates in the nation . In recent years, there has been growing recognition among city officials that to prevent violence, they must target its root causes—starting with offering resources to those who are most at-risk for committing and be victims of violence, including youth in disinvested neighborhoods.  “We have over 50 kids that have been shot since the beginning of this year,” said Wilford Pinkney Jr., director of the Mayor’s Office of Children, Youth, and Families. “Most of our car jackings and car thefts are all juveniles…There was no one engaging with them to determine what is happening, why they engaged in that behavior, and to try to deal with addressing it early on. We need to deal with that before we get to the point that they’re car jacking and shooting people.”    As part of its ARP allocation, St. Louis devoted $5.5 million to violence interruption initiatives. One is Safer Summer St. Louis, which funds youth- and grassroots-led organizations to plan pop-up events aimed at providing safe, community-building spaces. Jessica Meyers, director for the St. Louis Area Violence Prevention Commission , said that motivation for the program came from youth themselves: “We heard from the youth that they feel like they do not have access to their whole neighborhood. They do not have access to safe spaces in their neighborhood. The spaces that should be safe, like parks, aren’t safe because of gun violence or drug dealing or gang activity. Or the spaces that are safe—like a recreation center or a YMCA or a business—they don’t feel welcome in them, or they feel there are barriers, whether that’s a fee or transportation.” Safer Summer St. Louis seeks to tackle this by providing funding (up to $5,000 per event) to youth in neighborhoods most impacted by gun violence to host events like block parties, bike rides, fitness events, and other activities of their choosing.  Meyers said that while the program is based on evidence about what works to prevent violence, it is really about showing St. Louis youth that the city is invested in their future. “[Safer Summer St. Louis] is about investing in youth and telling them we value them enough that we’re taking this $1 million in [ARP] funding and we’re going to put it directly to events that allow you to be young and have fun in St. Louis—in a safer St. Louis.” 

“[Safer Summer St. Louis] is about investing in youth and telling them we value them enough that we’re taking this $1 million in [ARP] funding and we’re going to put it directly to events that allow you to be young and have fun in St. Louis—in a safer St. Louis.” Jessica Meyers, Director of the St. Louis Area Violence Prevention Commission

Strengthening civic infrastructure to promote safety  

Nearly every non-carceral community-based safety intervention requires the leadership and dedication of civic and community-based organizations to be implemented. 42 And aside from that, research indicates that the mere presence of such organizations within a neighborhood leads to reductions in violent crime. 43 The challenge, however, is that while city resources are plentiful for increasing police in high-crime neighborhoods, cities routinely fail to fund the community infrastructure (such as grassroots organizations) that stabilize communities. 44  

Figure 4 highlights how state and local governments are using ARP funds to enhance the capacity of community-based and civic organizations to prevent violence. For example, New Haven, Conn. used $785,000 of its ARP funds to create Civic Space , a centralized public forum for citizens and grassroots organizations to share input on ARP investments, learn about new community-centered violence prevention initiatives, and partner with other organizations working on similar aims. 

Case study: How Minnesota is supporting locally led grassroots organizations prevent violence Minnesota has a population of 5.7 million , with the largest concentrations in the cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul. Despite relatively strong gun laws, firearms are the leading cause of death for youth in the state. With Minneapolis being the site of George Floyd’s murder and the catalyst for global protests against racial injustice, the state knew it needed to act boldly in allocating ARP funds toward non-carceral public safety approaches—ultimately obligating $16.8 million for violence prevention and intervention activities as well as survivor support.   As part of this, state leaders allocated $5 million toward a new Innovation in Community Safety grant program . Kate Weeks, executive director of the Minnesota Department of Public Safety, said the program is “a new way for Minnesota to push out money that was community-focused,” where “decisions about where funds would go come directly from the community.” The grant program provides local organizations in targeted neighborhoods with up to $1 million for community safety programming, prioritizing areas with the highest rates of violent crime. According to Weeks, the recipients have been “virtually all nonprofits.”   The state made another $2.5 million available through Violence Intervention Grants , with a maximum per-grant amount of $250,000. These grants were designed to have a more equitable distribution of applicants, with a fiscal agent administering smaller funding amounts more quickly to grassroots organizations.

Recommendations from the field: Maximizing ARP funds to promote holistic community safety  

The state, county, and local leaders we interviewed offered five primary recommendations on how to more equitably and effectively allocate ARP spending toward non-carceral community safety interventions. These recommendations, which align with emerging research on best practices for the equitable use of ARP funds, include:  

• Build the capacity of smaller, grassroots nonprofits to deploy funds. States and municipalities rely on nonprofit partners to execute ARP obligations; small and grassroots nonprofits (which often serve and hold greater trust with disinvested communities) are at a structural disadvantage in becoming aware of and applying for federal funds, as well as in navigating the reporting requirements tied to federal dollars. 45 As Robert David explained, prior to Danville’s efforts to invest in violence prevention, there was a disconnect between grassroots organizations and “where the funding was,” which made the city “resource-rich but collaboratively poor.” Our interviewees explained how solving this mismatch requires direct outreach to nonprofits in disinvested communities to make them aware of ARP funds, simplifying the application process or dedicating state or municipal resources to support grassroots partners through the process, and loosening reporting requirements. For example, in St. Louis, the city hired a consultant to help grassroots nonprofits apply for funds. And in Minnesota, the state allocated different funding streams through a “social compact” model to allow some smaller nonprofits to pool their applications to make a stronger case for funding.  
• Employ participatory and community-informed processes to guide investment decisions . To be true to the White House’s directive to use ARP funds equitably , disproportionately impacted communities should be engaged in determining how these federal dollars are spent. A variety of traditional mechanisms can be used to do so, including surveys, online forms, public meetings, and listening sessions. But these tools alone can often exclude citizens who are not already highly engaged or who have limited broadband access. Leaders must be intentional about diversifying the forms of community engagement and ensuring engagement is meaningful. Some strategies include targeted outreach in disadvantaged census tracts, using paid community reviewers (including youth) to review proposals and help make grantmaking decisions, conducting outreach to incarcerated and returning citizens, and launching longer-term processes such as participatory budgeting . For example, the St. Louis Area Violence Prevention Commission hired youth to review proposals for their Safer Summer St. Louis program, and Danville leveraged previous community engagement processes to guide the allocation of ARP funds. Stakeholders across all cities emphasized the importance of engaging youth.

“When we give power to young people to use their voice, to be able to co-create, that is more powerful than [when] we are just ordaining from on high and not letting them be effective partners,” Devanshi Patel, CEO of the Center for Youth and Family Advocacy in Virginia. 

• Prioritize equity in the allocation, implementation, and evaluation of ARP funds. The Treasury Department explicitly urged states and localities to prioritize equity in their distribution of ARP funds. In terms of funding allocations, equity can mean ensuring funding flows to census tracts with disproportionate rates of violence or to organizations whose leadership and staff are demographically representative of the communities they serve (for example, by requiring grant seekers to disclose this information in applications, as Minnesota did). In terms of implementation, interviewees explained that equity means trusting community-based organizations—particularly those with deep ties to underserved places—to use their funding in nimble ways that respond to communities’ evolving needs. Equity also means recognizing that people involved in implementation might not have standard resumes or may have criminal records, but their lived experiences and community ties are valuable assets for expanding the success and impact of these interventions. As Multnomah County’s Adam Renon told us, “We need to learn from the individuals who have been incarcerated or who have committed gun violence, and ask them, ‘What would have prevented you from entering that life?’” Finally, in terms of evaluation, equity means thinking expansively about compliance requirements and reporting metrics—including incorporating qualitative data and perspectives from directly impacted communities—as burdensome requirements can strain capacity and limit the ability of smaller organizations to access funding.

“ We need to learn from the individuals who have been incarcerated or who have committed gun violence, and ask them, ‘What would have prevented you from entering that life?’” Adam Renon, Senior Policy Advisor, Multnomah County

• Use data to not just understand program effectiveness, but to respond to evolving community needs. Upticks in violence can be unpredictable and send shockwaves across entire communities—disrupting school, family, and social life even for residents who may not have been directly victimized themselves. For this reason, interviewees stressed the importance of using public safety indicators not just to gauge whether prevention initiatives are working, but also as a way to shift implementation and resource allocation to respond to communities’ needs. “We really tried to take a look at the data in front of us,” Multnomah County’s Raffaele Timarchi said. “We knew that mental health concerns were up, we knew youth were disconnected from school and social supports…The safety net had been frayed.” Timarchi explained how the intersecting challenges of rising gun homicide rates, school closures, and frontline workers’ burnout guided their cross-disciplinary approach to violence prevention. Wilford Pinkney Jr. described using St. Louis’ crisis response data to craft programs that better fit community needs: “If you’re doing crisis response right, you’re engaging people and gathering a lot of data that’s hard for people to refute in terms of what the needs are in the community. We don’t have to guess what people need. We have 6,000 interactions from people in this community saying what they need.” Interviewees stressed this imperative to use data not as a way to judge high-violence communities, but rather as a tool to more deeply understand their shifting needs.

“If you’re doing crisis response right, you’re engaging people and gathering a lot of data that’s hard for people to refute in terms of what the needs are in the community. We don’t have to guess what people need. We have 6,000 interactions from people in this community saying what they need.” Wilford Pinkney Jr., St. Louis

• Create dedicated and sustainable funding streams—including as line items in city budgets—and braid funding streams whenever possible to increase scale. ARP provides state and local leaders with a once-in-a-generation influx of funds, but it is time-limited. Multiple interviewees expressed their concern that too great a reliance on this one-time funding could lead to programmatic cliffs. They noted that creating line items in city, county, or state budgets, and/or creating permanent agencies devoted to community safety could provide stability in financing—especially since political cycles and new administrations can disrupt initiatives that lack permanency. 46 Our Brookings colleagues have also suggested braiding or blending funding streams to increase sustainability, which could involve braiding ARP dollars with  private funding , funding from  surrounding regional jurisdictions , or major new federal investments like those in the  Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act . Finally, municipalities should harness revenue from traditional economic development initiatives to sustain public priorities. For example, Danville City Manager Ken Larking outlined a vision for current development that includes the goal of never being “in a budget crisis where a neighborhood park has to be sacrificed because there isn’t enough money to do police services or whatever else.” And as an added benefit, by tying revenue to priorities that reflect established city values and priorities, governments are held accountable to steering development that benefits the entire community.  

Conclusion 

At the end of 2021, cities and counties had budgeted only 40% of their total ARP allocation (82% of the first of two funding tranches). While more money has been budgeted this year, there is still plenty of funding left to be allocated prior to the 2024 deadline and spent prior to the 2026 deadline. It is vital that state and local leaders seize this once-in-a-generation opportunity to invest in community-based violence prevention efforts now, as these programs can take time to establish roots at the local level and scale up. 

By investing in critical community safety infrastructure before the next rise in gun violence, communities will be better supported and equipped to avoid such violence, while also averting the intergenerational consequences that accompany punitive responses to it. As Devanshi Patel of Virginia’s Center for Youth and Family Advocacy said, it is imperative to invest in “restorative justice and community-based programming now to help kids stay out of the legal system” because system-involvement and incarceration can create harms for people and communities that are felt for generations. 

Ultimately, the benefits of addressing the root causes of gun violence go far beyond the shots you don’t hear. In addition to the lives saved, the benefits can be seen in the children playing in parks, the youth finding employment, the sick accessing treatment, the entrepreneurs launching businesses, or neighbors hosting block parties. By investing in economic opportunity, bolstering social cohesion, upgrading the built environment, and strengthening neighborhoods’ civic ties, state and local leaders can create the conditions necessary for long-lasting individual and collective flourishing. 

Acknowledgments:

The authors express their sincere gratitude to the state and local leaders who participated in research interviews to inform this piece: Gregory Baldwin, Thomas Carr, Robert David, Patrick Hogan, Tricia Hummel, Ken Larking, Jessica Meyers, Ahna Minge, Dr. Kiah E. Nyame, Devanshi Patel, Wilford Pinkney Jr., Adam Renon, Raffaele Timarchi, and Kathryn Weeks. The authors also thank the following experts for their review of various drafts of the research brief: Alan Berube, Jennifer S. Vey, and Eli Byerly-Duke (of Brookings Metro), Sam Washington and Thea Sebastian (of Civil Rights Corps), and Leah Sakala (of Alliance for Safety and Justice).  

About the Authors

Research associate – brookings metro, anthony barr, senior research assistant – brookings metro, oluwasekemi odumosu, research intern – brookings metro.

• “Non-carceral” safety interventions are those that exist outside of the formal criminal justice system, and are implemented by actors who are not part of the criminal justice system.
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• Our list of interviewees consisted of the following: From Danville, Va.: Gregory Baldwin (Director of Restorative Practices at Center for Youth and Family Advocacy), Robert David (Youth and Gang Violence Prevention Coordinator), Ken Larking (City Manager), and Devanshi Patel (Co-Founder and CEO at Center for Youth and Family Advocacy. From St. Louis: Jessica Meyers (Director, St. Louis Area Violence Prevention Commission) and Wilford Pinkney Jr. (Director, Mayor’s Office of Children, Youth, and Families). From Multnomah County, Ore: Adam Renon (Senior Policy Advisor for Multnomah County Chair Deborah Kafoury) and Raffaele Timarchi (Policy Advisor for Multnomah County Chair Deborah Kafoury). From Minnesota: Thomas Carr (Executive Budget Officer at Minnesota Management & Budget), Patrick Hogan (Director of Communications at Minnesota Management & Budget), Tricia Hummel (Assistant Director, Minnesota Office of Justice Programs), Ahna Minge (Assistant Commissioner for Budget Services and State Budget Director, Minnesota Management & Budget), and Kathryn Weeks (Executive Director, Minnesota Office of Budget Programs). From Rochester, N.Y.: Dr. Kiah E. Nyame (Coordinator, Rochester Office of Neighborhood Safety).
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• U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (n.d.). Neighborhoods and violent crime. https://www.huduser.gov/portal/periodicals/em/summer16/highlight2.html.
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The Stories We Tell About Guns Must Change

Vinik is the founder and executive director of Project Unloaded , an organization working to inspire the next generation to choose not to own or use guns through cultural campaigns. She lives in Chicago

W hen done well, storytelling brings sterile data to life. But stories can also be told in ways that ignore data and perpetuate harmful myths. And when it comes to gun violence, the stories that loom largest threaten the hard-fought progress made in recent years on this issue.

We’ve all heard the classic, every-man-for-himself saying, “When seconds count and the police are minutes away.” Those nine words are as memorable as they are emblematic of Americans’ views on firearms— when polled by the Pew Research Center in July 2023, protection was the number one reason people decide to get a gun. In reality however, a gun at home makes families less safe—not safer. Wielding the family gun to stop an armed intruder? Unlikely. A household gun used to kill the gun owner or their loved ones? Far more likely. But the latter story has less of a probability to be shown in modern entertainment.

To reduce gun violence, the stories we tell about guns should be based on what’s true: Most of the time, the presence of a gun makes people less safe .

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As the narrative of the “good guy with a gun” took hold, public opinion about guns shifted. In the early 2000s, most people believed that having a gun made them less safe and household gun ownership was on the decline. By 2018, nearly 6 in 10 Americans believed the myth that having a gun would make them safer.

It’s likely that an increasingly ferocious gun industry and its lobbying groups played a role in this shift, as did a rise in public mass shootings. It’s also true that there’s more gun violence in pop culture now than there was two decades ago. One 2021 study in the research journal PLOS One looked at how regularly prime time dramas depicted gun violence in 2000 versus 2018 and found that scenes featuring gun violence had doubled.

Regardless of the cause, the data around the effect is quite clear. As more people began to believe the myth that guns made them safer and chose to purchase firearms to address their fears, rates of gun violence increased too. More guns make us less safe.

Whether it’s local news or a beloved tv series or documentary, the stories we tell about guns and gun violence impact people’s views on the subject. Last year, the gun violence prevention group I founded, Project Unloaded, surveyed 1,000 members of Gen Z and asked them how they learned about guns. Most young people name family and friends as their main source for information about guns, but more than half of the young people polled cited television and film as a source of information. The influence of television and film is particularly strong for young Black people, who are disproportionately impacted by gun violence. Black children are more than 17 times as likely to die in a shooting as a white child of the same age according to CDC data.

If reducing gun violence is the goal, the path forward must include taking a careful look at the stories we tell and the messages they send—particularly to young people, who are still making up their minds about whether or not they’ll own a gun.

Watch: House of Tulip, a Short Documentary About the Dangers of Being Trans in America

A 2021 report produced by Sundance Institute and the Kendeda Fund offers strategies filmmakers can take to produce stories relevant to our nation’s gun violence crisis that are both compelling and effective at driving change. Some documentaries are already putting its recommendations to work. But as the report highlights, we shouldn’t expect every project to appeal to every person—and in fact, we are more likely to persuade and shift culture when we tailor our outputs.

At Project Unloaded, we focus our efforts on reaching young people with fact-based narratives about guns before they’ve made up their minds on the topic. We primarily work through social media campaigns on platforms like Snapchat and TikTok. On those platforms, we partner with Gen Z influencers to share the facts about how guns make us less safe without the partisan, polarized debate that often comes with talking about guns. So far, our results indicate this approach is working. We’ve reached over 3 million young people with our Safer Not Using Guns (SNUG) campaign.

Project Unloaded also runs community partner programs in select cities. Together with Chicago Public Schools, last summer, we worked with 50 high school students from some of the neighborhoods most impacted by gun violence. We showed students the data on how guns make them less safe and brought in marketing experts to help the teens craft their own social media campaigns that could reach their peers with that message. Almost all the participants had a personal experience with gun violence, and at the start of the program most said they were considering gun ownership.

One young woman, whose brother was shot to death and whose father is behind bars, expressed skepticism – she was sure that no one cared what she thought, and that gun violence couldn’t be stopped. By the conclusion of the program, she told us that we’d helped her see how she and her peers could be part of the solution, and the percentage of students who said they were definitely or probably getting a gun fell by  more than 20 points .

Adults are unlikely to shift their coffee order, let alone their views on a topic like guns after so many years of exposure to powerful yet false narratives around guns and safety. But young people are open to considering the facts on this issue and changing their minds as a result. In our 2022 survey , 17% of young people shifted away from the belief that guns made them safer after exposure to simple fact-based messages about gun risks.

In that finding is the path forward: human-centered, data-backed stories about gun violence can shift views and behaviors around guns and eventually, save lives.

To some, a 17% shift in views may sound small. But we shouldn’t expect one set of facts, or any one piece of media to resonate with everyone who sees it. Thankfully, culture change doesn’t require that. It only requires that a message stays with enough of its audience that the message can then spread organically through peer-to-peer conversation. That’s how teen use of cigarettes dropped by 20 points in 20 years . A similar shift can happen on guns.

The more we can use creative outputs such as visual art, film, and even social media campaigns to spread the message that guns make us less safe, the safer we all will eventually be. With data-based work and thoughtful, humanistic storytelling, we can change the narrative on guns and finally slow our nation’s gun violence epidemic.

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• Published: 02 April 2019

What guns mean: the symbolic lives of firearms

• Jonathan M. Metzl 1  

Palgrave Communications volume  5 , Article number:  35 ( 2019 ) Cite this article

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This article presents an overview of the symbolic tensions underlying representations of firearms and gun-related violence. The essay frames central questions that deserve further interrogation: what larger social and political contexts surround guns? How do narrations of gun rights or gun trauma map onto larger scripts about matters such as identity, bias, racism, or nationalism? What meanings do guns accrue for people and communities when these guns are not shooting bullets or causing mortal wounds? The paper lays out disciplinary terrain required to address these questions, calling on expertize from the social sciences, humanities, and arts.

Introduction

Academic research on guns often focuses on gun-related injuries and deaths, and for good reason—getting shot leads to profound real-world consequences. “Getting shot hurts,” President Ronald Reagan once put it after surviving and assassination attempt. “No matter how hard I tried to breath it seemed I was getting less and less air. I focused on that tiled ceiling and prayed” (Reagan, 2016 , p. 157).

Evidence suggests that shootings rise in correlation with increasing numbers of civilian owned firearms. Scholars use words such as “crisis” or “epidemic” to describe spiraling mortal costs of gun-related morbidity and mortality. A 2018 position paper by the American College of Physicians (Butkus et al., 2018 ) warned that “firearm violence continues to be a public health crisis in the United States that requires the nation’s immediate attention” while detailing the daily toll of firearm violence “in neighborhoods, homes, workplaces, and public and private places across the country.”

Gun-related injury and death is an urgent problem that plays out increasingly across the world, and often in particular ways in the United States—a country that has less than five percent of the world’s population, but over forty percent of its civilian-owned guns (Small Arms Survey, 2018 ).

Yet solutions remain elusive. Gun supporters reject research suggesting policy solutions to gun-related morbidity and mortality because of what they call a “tainted public health model” biased against their interests (Faria, 2001 ). Pro-gun communities thus encounter public health research in the context of backlash against findings that highlight the risks of having too many guns, or that posit the failures of pro-gun policies (Gun Owners of America ( 2009 ); Lott, 2014 ; Hsieh, 2016 )—without addressing the larger contexts of gun ownership. Meanwhile, leading public health organizations and medical groups decry the lack of funding for gun research, and the silencer it places on knowledge (Metzl, 2018 ).

The result is an often-predictable tug of war between the research community on one hand, and critics who assail anti-gun bias in academia on the other. Policy level approaches that aim to stem tides of rising rates of gun injury and death then struggle to develop strategies for bridging polarizing political divides about gun ownership and gun-related trauma. Gun researchers also often fail to communicate with people in communities where there are a lot of guns (Metzl, 2019 ).

Improving such communication requires understanding the complex valences that guns accrue for people and communities when these guns are not shooting bullets or causing mortal wounds; in other words, focusing not just on death data, but on life data as well. For instance, how do people in gun-dense regions narrate the roles that firearms play in their daily lives? Is there a pleasure in gun ownership? What stories do people tell about their weapons? Why do some people feel they need guns in their homes or neighborhoods, while others reject guns out of hand?

Guns also invoke larger questions about politics. What larger social and political contexts surround guns? How do narrations of gun rights or gun trauma map onto larger scripts about matters such as identity, bias, racism, or nationalism?

These types of questions get at the divergent ways that people talk and feel about guns, in addition to living with and dying from them. They aim to uncover what guns mean, in addition to what they do.

Addressing guns symbolically means recognizing ways that firearms emerge as powerful symbols shaped by history, politics, geography, economy, media, and culture, as well as by actors such as gun manufacturers or lobbying groups. Such an approach understands guns as both denotative entities made of real mass and that draw real blood, and as connotative cyphers whose associations trigger themes such as protection, danger, safety, identity, race, gender, class, erotics, oppression, or revulsion.

Scholars from beyond traditional biomedical fields have begun to address these complex issues. Sociologists and anthropologists speak to persons living in “gun country” to better understand the significances of firearms within families or social networks, or track expanding community undulations of gun-related trauma. Historians trace relationships between gun rights and political movements, and trace ways that gun economies map onto larger colonizing projects. Literary scholars use their expertise to detail how representations of guns are driven by larger cultural anxieties about race and gender. Artists use representations of guns and gun violence to catalyze discussions of issues such as protest, protection, or survivorship. Meanwhile, public health researchers utilize research about the social meanings of guns to better understand the role of culture in shaping debates on firearm regulations.

Emerging work thereby contextualizes the public health implications of civilian-owned firearms within larger attitudes, assumptions, or beliefs. By so doing, such work also illuminates ways that people talk, and often talk past one another, about the broader tensions and divisions signified by firearms. Such research also demarcates new opportunities for common ground in the midst of atomized and polarizing debates about the best ways to achieve safety for people, families, and communities.

The symbolic lives of firearms

What themes emerge from studying the symbolic lives of firearms?

Gun advocates describe ways that firearms represent forms of selfhood forged through the protection of home and family. Conservative U.S. author David French ( 2018 ) tells of obtaining guns to protect his wife and children after feeling threatened by strangers in the neighborhood where he and his family lived. French purchased guns to keep in his home, and soon began carrying a weapon in public as well. “You feel a sense of burning conviction,” he writes, “that you, your family, and your community are safer and freer because you own and carry a gun.” Books such as Chris Bird’s Thank God I Had a Gun ( 2008 ) similarly narrate support for gun rights through anecdotal renderings of armed citizens who stand their ground to protect themselves, their loved ones, or their property against intruders. Bird describes “heroes” such as, “Barbara,” who in her moment of need “was wearing a small Smith and Wesson five-shot revolver in an inside the waistband holster” and carrying her Winchester Defender shotgun when “she took a few steps outside…she could see two figures silhouetted.”

These types of representations speak of tensions that public health advocates have at times been slow to recognize—namely, that policies that regulate or restrict firearm ownership often neglect to address beliefs about guns among people who own them. In pro-gun communities, guns convey familiarity and custom, and suggest connection to neighbors or notions of cultural heritage. Such associations in turn give particular charge to alarmist rhetoric warning that liberals, researchers, or particular politicians aim to “take away your guns”—the implication being that these persons would uproot your families and traditions as well. For sociologist Harel Shapira ( 2017 ), such associations also highlight how, in certain parts of the U.S., carrying a gun represents a central part of people’s lives and the Second Amendment a key part of their identity. Sociologist Jennifer Carlson ( 2015 ) similarly describes a new category of “citizen-protectors” and a related honor code that emerged following the U.S. Supreme Court’s Heller decision, which allowed increasing numbers of people to carry guns for the defense of self, family, and property.

Gun identity is often contextual as well, influenced by factors such as regulation, legal status, medical condition, or job title. Anthropologist Ken MacLeish opens his book, Making War at Fort Hood ( 2013 , p. 3), with the story of a soldier on a “no weapon profile” and barred from all gun-related duties at on the military base because of a traumatic brain injury. Once he stepped off the Texas Army post, however, the soldier was free to purchase a Soviet-style semiautomatic “rifle with a blond wood butt stock and a slim bayonet folded under the barrel” at the gun store down the road, which he kept at the ready by the door of his off-base apartment to ward off intruders. No longer an armed soldier, he remained sentry of his civilian domain.

Guns also symbolize assumptions and anxieties about gender and socioeconomic class. Consider, for instance, that notions of patriarchal armed safety, self-reliance, and freedom also appear frequently in gun advertisements. “The Armed Citizen, Protected by Smith and Wesson” read one campaign in the NRA magazine American Rifleman (Smith and Wesson, 2018 ), while ads for the Tavor semiautomatic rifle claimed that the gun would restore the “balance of power” for men who owned it (Tavor SAR, 2013 ). Glock advertisements told men that owning their guns restored “the confidence to live your life” (Smith, 2014 a, 2014 b).

Communication studies professor Leonard Steinhorn ( 2014 ) reads these types of advertisements as signaling ways that gun manufacturers position their products as totems of manhood and symbols of white male identity in response to social and economic change. According to Steinhorn, working-class white men long benefited from racial and gender systems that gave them a monopoly over manufacturing and construction jobs. Starting in the 1960s, the civil rights and women’s movements brought increased competition into these marketplaces, while at the same time wages and the availability of manufacturing jobs declined precipitously. These changes in the economic and social order left working-class white men feeling bypassed and “victimized” by “usurpers” such as women and people of color. “How do these white men restore the strength and prestige of their idealized past?”, Steinhorn asks. “Through guns, which instill fear particularly among the urban and educated elites who hold the levers of power and status in society today.”

Social scientists have been at the fore of furthering understandings of guns and gun violence in relation to the role of gender and masculinity (Bridges, 2017 ). Eric Madfis reads the male gender-mass shooter connection to “cultural standards” dictating how men are expected to react to stress (Kiesel, 2018 ), while Carlson’s important research ( 2015 ) illustrates the complex ways that particular men use guns to navigate contexts of “social insecurity” about social and economic decline.

Guns also connote complex tensions, stereotypes, and anxieties about race. NRA rhetoric posits guns as protections against, in the words of CEO Wayne LaPierre, “bad guys,” thugs, “terrorists and home invaders and drug cartels, and car-jackers” (Cox, 2014 ; Beauchamp, 2017 ). Similar language courses through John Lott’s tome, More Guns, Less Crime ( 2010 , p. 3)—a statistically inspired book narrated through stories about people like a woman who “shot and killed an armed man she says was trying to carjack her van with her and her 1-year-old daughter inside.” The threat of gangs plays a major role in Bird’s Thank God I Had a Gun , where Barbara, a suburban white woman, shoots at five “black” teenagers, killing a “15-year-old black male,” in part because, as she explains it, “as far as I’m concerned, if you have five kids out at midnight, they are a gang” ( 2008 , p. 184).

According to sociologist Angela Stroud ( 2015 , pp. 33, pp. 88–89, p. 96, pp. 100–102), such rhetoric plays to histories in which guns function as symbols of white authority. When Stroud asked white permit holders why they felt they needed guns, they frequently replied with answers that highlighted a “criminal class” of people of color to justify gun ownership. “You hear about carjackings,” one gun toting man told her. “Let’s just say you pull up to a convenience store and there’s some certain people outside that make you feel a little nervous, then you’ve got your gun there…to make yourself feel more comfortable.” For Stroud, examples of white “good guys” who carried guns to protect against racial others were particularly important because most of the racialized altercations never actually happened. Rather, white gun owners imagined these encounters based on anxieties about persons of color. In such stories, gun ownership became a defense of internalized notions of racial order, as well as an external personal safety.

Society often responds differently when the “good guys” are not white. For instance, the U.S. political establishment mobilized to disarm African American gun owners for much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and black leaders who advocated taking up arms in self-defense against white supremacist intimidation met with violent resistance. Robert F. Williams, president of the Monroe, North Carolina, chapter of the NAACP in the 1950s and early 1960s, was forced to flee to Cuba after being pursued by the FBI on fabricated kidnaping charges, and after advocating for “the right of Negroes to meet the violence of the Ku Klux Klan by armed self-defense” (Williams, 1962 ). Near-universal mainstream condemnation followed Malcolm X’s claim ( 1964 ) that “article number two of the Constitutional amendments provides you and me the right to own a rifle or a shotgun.” Republican politicians, including then-California Governor Reagan, swiftly moved to enact expansive new gun-control measures when Huey Newton and the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense advocated carrying guns in public—as permitted by California law at the time (Huey et al., 2002 ).

Black gun ownership represented a right of American citizenship and an essential component of self-protection for Robert Williams, Malcom X, and others. Williams saw armed “Negro self-defense” as central to strategies required “when an oppressed people show a willingness to defend themselves” against “the violence with which Negroes in the South are treated daily—nay, hourly” (Williams, 1962 , pp. 4–5). Similar arguments resonate with present-day groups such as Black Guns Matter, an African American gun rights organization highlighted in articles by political journalist Jane Coaston—whose work also highlights the racialized underpinnings of the U.S. gun-control movement (Coaston, 2018 ). My own current research (Metzl, 2019 ) shows how American racial history lay the groundwork for differing responses to white versus African American open carry proponents in the present day: mainstream society reflexively codes white men carrying weapons in public as patriots, while marking armed black men as threats or criminals.

Guns also connote contested narrations of history, and become symbols of peculiar conceptions of nationhood as a result. U.S. gun manufacturers long promoted guns through myths of settlers and cowboys who tamed the Wild West, guns in hand. In 2017, journalist Francis Clines ( 2014 ) visited the NRA Firearms Museum in Virginia and found that “a poster figure of John Wayne… offers a greeting here at the gun museum’s gallery door as he holds his Winchester carbine at the ready.” In his book Gun Crusaders , sociologist Scott Melzer ( 2009 , pp. 30–33) exposes the role of Wayne-style gunslingers as a mythology not of the 1800s, but of mid-20th-century gun advertisers and popular culture. Guns were “unquestionably part of white westward expansion,” Melzer writes, “but the role of firearms in expansion has been greatly exaggerated,” and in reality many settlers who traveled west found little use for firearms in their daily lives.”

Meanwhile, historian Priya Satia’s expansive book, Empire of Guns ( 2018 , p. 11) upends traditional tellings of the industrial revolution by showing the importance of Britain’s prosperous gun trade to its imperial expansions. The book’s sweeping narrative spans centuries and continents to uncover how gun capitalism brought about a world in which “lethal mechanical violence came to pervade modern existence.”

Guns can function as symbols of resistance or markers of collective trauma. Artists Jonathan Ferrara and Brian Borrello launched a Guns in the Hands of Artists project ( 2016 ) in response to soaring gun homicide rates in New Orleans, Louisiana. In the project, painters, glass artists, sculptors, photographers, and poets used decommissioned guns from a gun buyback program to “stimulate thinking about guns and gun violence in America.” Guns grew into a traveling, community-based social activist art project that merged guns with art “as a vehicle for dialogue, as a call to action, and―ultimately―as an agent of change.” Similarly, Mexican sculptor and artist Pedro Reyes joined with British composer John Coxon to produce an “orchestra” of instruments cast from rifles and handguns decommissioned in the town of Ciudad Juarez (Phaidon, 2013 ).

Guns, bullets, and bullet holes also feature prominently in the work of Mexican artist Teresa Margolles—who meticulously chronicles the effects of the drug war on Mexican bodies (Grigorian, 2017 ; Phaidon, 2013 ). Nodding to Andy Warhol, American painter Nicole Eisenman’s colorful images place the viewer in the eye of a gun’s authoritarian gaze (Smith, 2016 ). South African artist Ralph Ziman photographs men holding brightly colored, beaded AK-47s to highlight the seductive lethality of the weapons and the “destructive cycle of the international arms trade” (O’Neal, 2014 ).

Los Angeles-based painter Henry Taylor’s work chronicles the traumatizing effects of guns, bullets, and police violence on black bodies—his remarkable 2017 painting, The Times They Ain’t A Changing, Fast Enough , captures the dying moments of Philando Castile, a black man shot by police while his girlfriend and daughter were in the car alongside him (Sargent, 2018 ).

American poet Danez Smith ( 2014 a, 2014 b) similarly eulogizes the traumatizing effects of racial and police violence on black men. His extraordinary poem, juxtaposing the black boy and the bullet , draws jarring synergy between the short lives of these two actors, and the interlinked politics that surround them. “Both spark quite the debate,” read the poem’s arresting final lines. “Some folks want to protect them/some think we should just get rid/of the damn things all together.”

The guns themselves

Why do well-intentioned people find it difficult to agree on ways to address firearm related injury and death? The sources cited above cumulatively suggest that it is not just the politics surrounding guns that divide people—so do the guns themselves, and their connections to deeply charged existential issues.

Guns reflect and encapsulate histories and politics about race, gender, socioeconomics, and any number of charged themes that are better addressed head on—by fighting against racism or racially inflected gun messaging for instance, or against economic policies that undermine working class jobs—rather than by armed proxy.

Addressing guns symbolically allows guns researchers to address questions that are counterintuitive in addition to ones that are self-evident. In what ways to guns shape identities? , might be one such question. Or, in what ways are guns sublime? Such an approach also provides means of better understanding, and then pushing back on stigmatizing stereotypes that surround gun violence—such as the stereotypes of race promoted by the NRA, or assumptions that “mental illness” alone causes mass shootings (Metzl and MacLeish, 2015 ).

Uncovering the symbolic valences of guns also provides means for talking across political and social divides in moments of relative peacetime, rather than in phases of distress. Debates about the roles of guns in society often emerge after mass violence, such as after mass shootings. In the U.S., public opinion polls suggest that people become ever more entrenched in polarizing stances following these horrific events. One side pushes for reformed gun laws, while the other digs in, or, as data suggests, buys more guns and ammunition because of concerns about future regulations. Compromise remains elusive.

Frequently lost among the push and pull strategies, not just for implementing effective policies, but for talking to people whose cooperation is vital for effective gun policy to be put into practice. Strategies here might promote open dialogue about perceptions and misperceptions of risk, gun related and otherwise.

Guns injure and kill tens of thousands of people each year, and many of these injuries and fatalities are preventable. However, approaching guns as symbols illustrates the potential limitations of framing gun related morbidity solely as an epidemic or a public-health crisis for which policy solutions are the primary answer. While doing so rightly calls attention to a dire need for intervention, it also limits recognition of the deeper biases, currents, and fissures that shape what guns mean, and what they come to represent.

Guns undoubtedly signify a public health crisis. Too many people die and too many communities suffer lasting trauma, and often in patterened ways that public health expertize is designed to address. But scratch the surface, and it becomes increasingly clear that guns signal a social crisis as well.

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Gun Violence in the United States

Gun violence is a preventable public health tragedy affecting communities all over the United States. Every day, more than 100 Americans die by gun violence, including 64 who die by firearm suicide, 39 Americans who die by firearm homicide, and 3 who are killed by other forms of gun violence. In addition, every day nearly 200 Americans visit the emergency department for nonfatal firearm injuries. Over half of these cases are a result of a firearm assault and an additional 37% are unintentional injuries. Overwhelming evidence shows that firearm ownership and access is associated with increased suicide, homicide, unintentional firearm deaths, and injuries. These injuries and deaths are preventable, and we must advocate for evidence-based solutions to make gun violence in the U.S. rare and abnormal.

Gun Ownership

How does gun ownership and access to firearms affect gun deaths, an in-depth look at gun violence in the united states, gun death rates by state, gun deaths by demographics, recommendations.

Gun violence is a public health epidemic in the United States. Every year nearly 40,000 Americans are killed by guns, including more than 23,000 who die by firearm suicide, 14,000 who die by firearm homicide, more than 500 who die by legal intervention, 12 nearly 500 who die by unintentional firearm injuries, and more than 300 who die by undetermined intent. 12 This equates to more than 100 gun deaths every single day. In addition, every day nearly 200 Americans visit the emergency department for nonfatal firearm injuries. 13

In 2019, the most recent year of data available, there were 39,707 gun deaths – 109 every single day. 14 Three in every five gun deaths are suicides and more than one-third are homicides, while the remainder are unintentional, of unknown intent, or law enforcement intervention.

Among high-income countries, the United States is an outlier in terms of gun violence. It has been well-documented that firearm ownership rates ? are associated with increased firearm-related death rates. The U.S. has the highest firearm ownership and highest firearm death rates of 27 high-income countries. 15 The firearm homicide rate in the U.S. is nearly 25 times higher than other high-income countries and the firearm suicide rate is nearly 10 times that of other high-income countries. 16

It is a common misconception that individuals living with mental illness are responsible for gun violence. When compared to other countries, the United States has similar rates of mental illness, yet we have much higher rates of gun violence. 17, 18 To be clear, mental illness does not cause gun violence – the problem is access to firearms.

While gun death data are the most reliable type of gun violence data currently available, it is important to recognize that gun deaths are only the tip of the iceberg of the gun violence epidemic. In addition to gun deaths, many more people are shot and survive their injuries, are shot at but not hit, or witness gun violence. Many experience gun violence in other ways, for example by living in impacted communities, losing loved ones to gun violence, or being threatened with a gun.

The CDC Plays a Vital Role in Providing Public Health Data to Researchers

Researchers need robust and reliable data to study and develop solutions to address the epidemic of gun violence in the United States. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is the federal agency responsible for protecting the health of Americans by ensuring that data is properly collected to develop solutions to our nation’s public health crises, including gun violence. The CDC’s National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS) plays an instrumental role for gun violence prevention advocates and researchers. The NVDRS uses death certificates, police reports, and hospital records to report information about the victim, the cause of death, and the circumstances surrounding their death. 19 The CDC makes this data publicly available and easily accessible through their Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System (WISQARS).

To learn more, visit our page on nonfatal firearm injuries.

The following data presented on this page focuses on the impact to those who were killed by gun violence.

Many Americans celebrate guns in our culture and disregard the inherent public safety issues that a gun-friendly culture creates. U.S. firearm ownership rates exceed those of other high-income countries 20 and Americans own 46% of the world’s civilian-owned firearms. 21 Thirty percent of Americans report owning a gun, 22 with estimates of the total number of privately-owned guns in the U.S. ranging from 265 million to nearly 400 million. 23, 24, 25 The majority of gun owners (66%) report owning multiple guns, 26 and it is estimated that half of all guns are in the hands of just 3% of the U.S. population. 27

Gun Ownership by State

Gun ownership varies significantly by state. For example, one study found that gun ownership varies from 61.7% in Alaska to 5.2% in Delaware. 28 Higher levels of gun ownership are correlated with higher rates of suicide, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33 homicide, 34, 35, 36, 37 unintentional firearm deaths, 38, 39 law enforcement killings, 40 and violent crime. 41

Reasons for Gun Ownership – “Protection”

More than 6 in 10 Americans believe that a gun in the home makes the family safer – a figure that has nearly doubled since 2000. 42 This increase in perceived safety is reflected in shifting reasons for gun ownership. In a 2017 Pew Research survey, two-thirds (67%) of gun owners cited protection as a major reason for gun ownership. 43 This represents a notable increase from the mid-1990s, when the majority of American gun owners cited recreation as their primary reason for gun ownership and fewer than half owned guns primarily for protection. 44

However, the evidence is clear: guns don’t make you safer. Contrary to the gun lobby’s talking points, overwhelming research shows that gun ownership and easy access to guns inherently puts individuals and their families at higher risk of death and injury. 22, 23 With a recent study estimating that there are more guns than people in the United States 45 and with a rate of gun violence continually increasing, it is imperative to know the facts about guns and gun violence.

“We must remember that stopping gun violence isn’t only about preventing high-profile mass shootings. It is about stopping gun violence in all its forms. We must acknowledge that gun violence comes in many different forms — from gun suicide to police brutality to domestic violence to unintentional shootings to daily gun violence in neighborhoods across the country.”

- Bryan Barks, Director of Strategic Communications

Every year, nearly 40,000 Americans are killed by guns, including: 46

• More than 23,000 who die by firearm suicide
• 14,000 who die by firearm homicide
• More than 500 who die by legal intervention ?
• Nearly 500 who die by unintentional firearm injuries
• More than 300 who die by undetermined intent

This equates to more than 100 gun deaths every single day.

More than 60% of all gun deaths are suicides. 58 Evidence consistently shows that access to firearms increases the risk of suicide. 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54 Access to a gun in the home increases the odds of suicide more than three-fold. 55 Firearms are so dangerous when someone is at risk for suicide because they are the most lethal suicide attempt method.

Though research shows that few individuals substitute means for suicide if their preferred method is not available, if firearms are not available, the person at risk for suicide is much more likely to survive even if they attempt using another method. 56 Delaying a suicide attempt can also allow suicidal crises to pass and lead to fewer suicides. Ninety percent of individuals who attempt suicide do not go on to die by suicide. 57 The use of a firearm in a suicide attempt often means there is no second chance.

To learn more, visit PreventFirearmSuicide.com or visit our page on firearm suicide .

Over 35% of all gun deaths are homicides. 58 Access to firearms – such as the presence of a gun in the home – is correlated with an increased risk for homicide victimization. 58, 59 States with high rates of gun ownership consistently have higher firearm homicide rates. 60, 61, 62 Studies show that access to firearms doubles the risk of homicide. 63 Nearly 75% of all U.S. homicides are by firearm. 64 Firearm homicide is a complex issue that includes different types of gun violence – domestic violence, interpersonal community violence, and mass shootings – and requires an array of different policies, programs, and practices if we want to see meaningful change.

Gun ownership also has implications for the number of mass shootings in a state. A 2019 study found that the permissiveness of state gun laws and an increase in a state’s gun ownership were associated with higher rates of mass shootings. Specifically, every 10 unit increase in the permissiveness of a state’s gun laws is associated with a 9% higher rate of mass shootings. For every 10% increase in gun ownership, states have a 35.1% higher rate of mass shootings. 65 The authors wrote, “This means that a state like California, which has approximately two mass shootings per year, will have an extra mass shooting for every 10 unit increase in permissiveness over five years. It will also have three to five more mass shootings per five years for every 10 unit increase in gun ownership.” 66

To learn more, visit our pages on firearm homicide or mass shootings .

Unintentional Shootings

About 1% of all gun deaths are unintentional. 67 “Unintentional” is the description used for a death that was not caused purposely. In gun violence, examples include fatal injuries that occur when a weapon misfires or is mishandled by a child and results in the victim being shot (in contrast with homicide and suicide, both of which involve an intent to pull the trigger and cause harm). Easy access to firearms, particularly unsecured firearms and the presence of firearms in risky situations, increases risk of unintentional injury and death by firearm. Mitigating access with safer storage practices and through evidence-based policy prevents unintentional gun violence.

To learn more, visit our page on unintentional shootings .

Legal Intervention / Police-Involved Shootings

“Legal intervention” is the description used by the CDC for injuries inflicted by the police or other law enforcement agents, including military on duty, in the course of arresting or attempting to arrest lawbreakers, suppressing disturbances, maintaining order, and other legal actions. In gun violence, these are also known as police-involved shootings. According to the CDC, more than 500 Americans die by legal intervention every year.

However, the government’s data (including the CDC data) provide a substantial under-count of police-involved injuries and deaths. To address this gap, a number of media sources have tracked police-involved shootings in recent years, most notably the Washington Post’s Fatal Force database. This database found that 1,000 Americans are shot and killed by police every year – more than double the number of police-involved fatal shootings than are reported in FBI and CDC databases. 68 Black Americans are disproportionately impacted by police-involved shootings and are killed at more than twice the rate as White Americans. 69

Ultimately, better data on police-involved injuries and deaths are sorely needed. Compulsory and comprehensive data collection at the local level, reporting to the federal government, and transparency in public dissemination of data will be critical for understanding this unique kind of gun violence and developing evidence-based solutions to minimize police-involved shootings.

Gun Violence in America - A Public Health Crisis Decades in the Making

A report from the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence and Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, A Public Health Crisis Decades in the Making: A Review of 2019 CDC Gun Mortality Data , draws on the most recent gun death data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to illustrate the fatal toll of the gun violence epidemic in the U.S. The report outlines gun death data from 2019, including demographic details, state-by-state breakdowns, and reviews trends over the last two decades.

Gun Death Trends Over Time

39,707 Americans died by gun violence in 2019, a small decrease of 33 gun deaths from 2018. 70

• An average of 109 people died of gun violence each day in 2019, bringing the most recent five-year average (2015-2019) to 106 gun deaths per day.
• 23,941 Americans died by firearm suicide in 2019, 66 people every day.
• 14,414 Americans died by firearm homicide in 2019, more than 39 people every day.

Gun Deaths in the United States, 2010-2019

Number of deaths

Source: CDC WONDER.

Gun Death Rate Trends Over Time

The overall gun death rate increased 17% over the last decade – the gun suicide rate increased 12.5% and the gun homicide rate increased nearly 26%. 71

• While the firearm suicide rate decreased slightly from 2018 to 2019, the rate has trended upward  over the last decade.
• The firearm homicide rate increased over the last decade spiking 31% from 2014 to 2016 and remaining at at this elevated level.

Gun Death Rates in the United States, 2010-2019

Age-adjusted rate per 100,000

All rates listed are age-adjusted in order to allow for accurate comparisons between populations with differing age distributions.

Gun violence is an epidemic that reaches communities large and small, but it is more common in some places than others. Among the states in 2019, Alaska had the highest gun death rate (24.40 per 100,000 people), followed by Mississippi, Wyoming, and New Mexico (24.23, 22.33, and 22.27 per 100,000, respectively). Conversely, Massachusetts had the lowest gun death rate (3.40 per 100,000 people), followed by New York, New Jersey, and Hawaii (3.94, 4.13, and 4.42 per 100,000, respectively). 72

Age-adjusted gun death rate, 2019

• 3.40 to 8.70
• 8.71 to 14.01
• 14.02 to 19.32
• 19.33 to 24.40

For all forms of gun violence, males die at much higher rates than females. 72 In 2019:

• 87% of firearm suicide decedents were male
• 84% of firearm homicide decedents were male
• 90% of unintentional firearm decedents were male
• 96% of police-involved shooting decedents were male

Firearm Suicide Deaths by Sex, 2019

Firearm homicide deaths by sex, 2019, unintentional firearm deaths by sex, 2019, police-involved shooting firearm deaths by sex, 2015-2020.

Source: Washington Post.

By Race, Ethnicity, and Age

Overall: 73

• Firearm suicide rates are highest among White people, followed by American Indian/Alaska Native people. Firearm suicide risk is highest among people age 75 and older across the population as a whole, but that is primarily due to the very high rate of suicide among White males in that age group. Firearm suicide rates peak at younger ages (ages 20-34) for American Indian/Alaska Native, Asian, and Black males and females.
• Firearm homicide rates are highest among Black people as compared to people of other racial and ethnic identities and firearm homicide risk is highest among people ages 20-34 across the entire population.
• Unintentional firearm death rates are highest among American Indian/Alaska Native and Black Americans, followed by White Americans. Nearly one-quarter of all unintentional firearm decedents are 0-19 years old.
• Police-involved shootings disproportionately affect Black Americans and Hispanic/Latino Americans. Black Americans are killed in police-involved shootings at more than twice the rate of White Americans. Hispanic/Latino Americans are killed by police-involved shootings at nearly twice the rate of White Americans. 74

Stop gun violence in all its forms through a multifaceted public health approach.

Gun violence is a complex issue requiring many approaches to its prevention. We are committed to evidence-based policies, programs, and practices and ensuring that all of these preventative measures are designed and implemented equitably. To stop gun violence in all its forms:

• Apply the public health approach for effective gun violence prevention. See Public Health Approach for more information.
• Fund and conduct gun violence research, which is fundamental for effective gun violence prevention. See Gun Violence Research for more information.
• Enact and implement policies, programs, and practices that create time and space between individuals who may be at risk of suicide and firearms. See Firearm Suicide for more information.
• Enact and implement policies, programs, and practices that reduce easy access to firearms by people at risk of interpersonal violence and invest in interventions that address the root causes of gun violence in structurally disadvantaged communities. See Firearm Homicide , Community Violence , and Nonfatal Injuries for more information.
• Expand both federal and state domestic violence firearm prohibitions to reduce abusers’ access to firearms and improve collection and reporting of domestic violence related data. See Domestic Violence for more information.
• Enact and implement policies that reduce easy access to firearms by people at elevated risk of interpersonal violence and ban assault weapons and large capacity magazines that increase lethality in mass shootings. See Mass Shootings for more information.
• Implement programs and practices that promote safer firearm storage and handling. See Unintentional Shootings for more information.
• Train healthcare professionals on lethal means safety counseling so they are prepared to ask patients about firearm access and provide effective and respectful counseling when appropriate. See Lethal Means Safety Counseling for more information.
• Enact and implement a true universal background check law that requires background checks on all gun sales and transfers, including private and online sales, and eliminate “default proceed” sales. See Universal Background Checks for more information.
• Enact and implement state extreme risk laws to prevent tragedy before it occurs and support robust implementation through federal funding. See Extreme Risk Laws for more information.
• Reinstate the federal ban on assault weapons and large capacity magazines. In the absence of federal action, states should continue to enact and implement assault weapons and large capacity magazine bans. See Assault Weapons and Large Capacity Magazines for more information.
• Focus gun violence prevention policies on evidence-based risk factors — not mental illness. Use appropriate language and avoid harmful stereotypes. See Mental Illness for more information.

Educational Materials

• A Public Health Crisis Decades in the Making: A Review of 2019 CDC Gun Mortality Data
• Gun Violence in America: An Analysis of 2018 CDC Data
• Gun Violence in America: Data Brief

Fact sheets

• Overview of U.S. Gun Deaths: 2020
• United States Gun Deaths: 2019
• Guns Don’t Make You Safer    
• Staying Safe At Home    
• December 2018 op-ed in The Hill , Five gun violence prevention priorities for the incoming Congress
• June 2018 blog, On Wear Orange Day, we must focus on gun violence in all its forms
• November 2017 op-ed in The Hill ,  The path forward for Democrats starts with gun violence prevention
• Anglemyer A, Horvath T, & Rutherford G. (2014). The accessibility of firearms and risk for suicide and homicide victimization among household members: a systematic review and meta-analysis . Annals of Internal Medicine.
• Bangalore S & Messerli FH. (2013). Gun ownership and firearm-related deaths. American Journal of Medicine.
• Choron R, Spitzer S, & Sakran JV. (2019). Firearm violence in America: Is there a solution? Advances in Surgery.
• Dahlberg LL, Ikeda RM, & Kresnow MJ. (2004). Guns in the home and risk of a violent death in the home: findings from a national study. American Journal of Epidemiology.
• Grinshteyn E & Hemenway D. (2019). Violent death rates in the U.S. compared to those of the other high-income countries, 2015. Preventive Medicine.
• Kalesan B, Villarreal MD, Keyes KM, & Galea S. (2016). Gun ownership and social gun culture. Injury Prevention.
• Karp A. (2018). Estimating global civilian-held firearms numbers. Small Arms Survey.
• Knopov A, Sherman RJ, Raifman JR, Larson E, & Siegel MB. (2019). Household gun ownership and youth suicide rates at the state level, 2005–2015. American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
• Miller M, Azrael D, & Hemenway D. (2002). Rates of household firearm ownership and homicide across U.S. regions and states, 1988-1997. American Journal of Public Health.
• Miller M, Hemenway D, & Azrael D. (2007). State-level homicide victimization rates in the US in relation to survey measures of household firearm ownership, 2001-2003. Social Science & Medicine.
• Monuteaux MC, Lee LK, Hemenway D, Mannix R, & Fleegler EW. (2015). Firearm ownership and violent crime in the US: an ecologic study. American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
• Parker K, Horowitz JM, Igielnik R, Oliphant JB, & Brown A. (2017). America’s complex relationship with guns. Pew Research Center.
• Reeping PM, Cerdá M, Kalesan B, Wiebe DJ, Galea S, & Branas CC. (2019). State gun laws, gun ownership, and mass shootings in the US: cross sectional time series. British Medical Journal.
• Siegel M, Ross CS, & King C. (2014). Examining the relationship between the prevalence of guns and homicide rates in the USA using a new and improved state-level gun ownership proxy. Injury Prevention.

Additional resources

• Reducing Gun Violence in America: Informing Policy with Evidence and Analysis by Daniel Webster and Jon Vernick.
• Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America by Adam Winkler.

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The Politics of Gun Safety Are Changing. I Should Know.

I encourage people who, like me, are impatient for change to look around, because something is happening.

A mass shooting. Children dead. Families and communities grieving. Then the cycle repeats. I get asked over and over again: Why do mass shootings not motivate lawmakers to act? Why does nothing happen?

I understand the frustration. I’m a gun owner and a strong Second Amendment supporter. I’m also a physician and a grandfather. We have reached a public-health crisis where firearms are now the No. 1 killer of kids in America. Shockingly, the rate of firearm fatalities among children under 18 increased 87 percent from 2011 to 2021. Had the problem been this large during my time in the U.S. Senate, where I represented Tennessee for 12 years and served as majority leader for four, it would have unquestionably influenced my vote on key firearm-related legislation. I want to see proven firearm-safety policies enacted that protect our children—which we can achieve while preserving our Second Amendment rights.

Still, I encourage people who, like me, are impatient for change to look around, because something is happening. I am convinced lawmakers are listening.

From the March 2024 issue: To stop a shooter

In 2022, after the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, Congress came together, Republicans and Democrats, and passed the most comprehensive piece of firearm-safety legislation in nearly 30 years . Known as the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act , the law did a number of things, including establishing an enhanced background-check process for buyers under 21 (which has stopped more than 600 firearm purchases by those who pose a threat to themselves or their community to date), providing funding for states to implement crisis-intervention programs, preventing convicted abusive dating partners from purchasing firearms for five years, creating new federal criminal statutes for firearm trafficking and straw purchasing, and investing in school safety and mental-health-care access. Did it solve all of our problems? No, but it signaled an important shift.

And the shift continues. Last year, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee, one of our nation’s strongest Second Amendment governors, introduced an order-of-protection law to temporarily keep guns out of the hands of those exhibiting behavior that makes them a threat to themselves or others. When his proposal in response to last year’s Covenant School shooting failed to pass, he called the legislature back to Nashville for a special session on public safety, where lawmakers considered what types of changes they could support. We saw some incremental progress .

We also continue to see movement in Tennessee’s legislative session, including the advancement of bills that would prohibit firearm purchases by those deemed incompetent to stand trial and that would criminalize threats of mass violence, as well as proposed budget funding by the governor to address a 761,000-plus background-check-record backlog.

Part of this progress is due to the engagement of families frustrated that kids aren’t safe in their own schools, leading to the formation of several grassroots organizations, including one group that I’m a part of, Voices for a Safer Tennessee .

Another thing I’m excited about is access to data. In 2018, a de facto freeze on federal funding for firearm-violence research was overturned (based in part on the interpretation and recommendation of the Republican Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar), and we’re starting to see the results of investing in this field. Before, we had ideas about what might work, but lacked the evidence-based data to confirm them. Now we’re learning that temporary-transfer laws, which temporarily remove firearm access for those who are in danger of harming themselves or others, lead to reductions in state suicide rates. Secure-storage laws, when paired with penalties for noncompliance, reduce firearm deaths, particularly among children. States with universal background checks (including background checks for private sales) have reduced rates of firearm homicide.

Mike Spies: The death of a gun rights warrior

These are all policies that enjoy broad bipartisan support: A national Fox News poll found majority voter support for universal background checks (87 percent) and temporary-transfer laws (80 percent). And a 2023 Vanderbilt University poll of Tennessee registered voters found majority support for secure-storage laws (68 percent) and even discovered that those who identified as NRA supporters backed “red flag” laws to prevent school shootings (68 percent) and gun-related violence (53 percent).

On March 27, we marked one year since the senseless Covenant School shooting in my community of Nashville. Thousands in my state came together to recognize this day by linking arms , creating a three-mile human chain to remember the six precious lives lost and the nearly 1,300 Tennesseans who have died from firearms this past year.

Now lawmakers must hear from the sizable majority of us who want change. If this is an issue that you care about, get engaged. Contact your legislators, vote in every election, and get local conversations started around this issue.

I know the legislative process moves slowly, on the state and federal level. I lived it for 12 years in the Senate. Change doesn’t happen overnight. But those who succeed are those who learn from the losses, celebrate the small wins—no matter how incremental—and stay committed for the long haul.

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Guest Essay

Ethan Crumbley’s Parents Were Just Part of a Much Bigger Problem

By Elizabeth Spiers

Ms. Spiers, a contributing Opinion writer, is a journalist and digital media strategist.

James and Jennifer Crumbley never anticipated that their then-15-year-old son, Ethan, would use the 9-millimeter Sig Sauer handgun Mr. Crumbley had bought — ostensibly as an early Christmas present — to kill four students at a Michigan high school. At least that’s the argument their lawyers made in court before Ms. Crumbley, last month, and Mr. Crumbley, almost two weeks ago, were convicted of involuntary manslaughter in separate trials. Prosecutors argued that the Crumbleys did not do enough to secure the gun and ignored warning signs that Ethan was planning to use it.

After every mass shooting by a teenager at a school, there is an instinct to look to the shooter’s parents to understand what went wrong. In the case of the Crumbleys, this seems obvious: Ethan left disturbing journal entries fantasizing about shooting up the school, and stating that he had asked his parents for help with his mental health issues but didn’t get it. His father said the family had a gun safe but the safe’s combination was the default factory setting, 0-0-0.

One factor that’s gotten less attention, however, is how the Crumbleys’ attitudes and actions reflect an increasingly insidious gun culture that treats guns as instruments of defiance and rebellion rather than as a means of last resort.

I’ve been thinking about this case a lot because I grew up in the 1980s and ’90s in a rural part of the Deep South where almost everyone I knew had guns in the house, unsecured, and mental illness was stigmatized and often went untreated. Church was considered a superior venue for counseling, and only “crazy” people sought professional help. If the evidence for criminal negligence is a failure to lock up a gun and ignoring signs of mental illness, many of the adults I grew up around would have been (and still would be) vulnerable to the same charges as the Crumbleys.

It’s convenient and comforting for many people to believe that if it had been their child, they’d have prevented this tragedy. But prison visiting rooms are full of good, diligent parents who never thought their kid would be capable of landing there.

My parents didn’t own a gun safe, but kept guns hidden away from us, which, like many gun owners at the time, they thought of as “secured.” The men in my family were all hunters and the guns they kept were hunting rifles, not AR-15s. (You can’t feed a family with deer meat that’s been blown to bits.) I knew my parents kept a handgun, too, but it was never shown to us, or treated as a shiny new toy.

Gun culture was different then. It would have never occurred to my parents to acquire an entire arsenal of guns and display them prominently around the house, as some people now do, or ludicrously suggest that Jesus Christ would have carried one . They did not, as more than a few Republican politicians have done, send out Christmas photos of their children posing with weapons designed explicitly to kill people at an age when those children likely still believed Santa existed. Open carry was legal, but if you were to walk into the local barbecue joint with a semiautomatic rifle on your back emblazoned with fake military insignia, people would think you were creepy and potentially dangerous, not an exemplar of masculinity and patriotism.

All of these things happen now with regularity, and they’re considered normal by gun owners who believe that any kind of control infringes on their Second Amendment rights. Children are introduced at a young age to guns like the Sig Sauer that Ethan Crumbley used. They’re taught to view guns as emblematic of freedom and the right to self-defense — two concepts that have been expanded to include whatever might justify unlimited accumulation of weapons.

“Freedom” is short for not being told what to do, even though the law very much dictates how and when guns should be used. “Self-defense” is often talked about as a justifiable precaution in the event of home invasion, though home invasions are as rare as four-leaf clovers and do not require an arsenal unless the invader is a small army. (It’s also worth noting that basic home security systems are far less expensive than many popular guns, which suggests that at the very least, some gun owners may be intentionally opting for the most violent potential scenario.) Most important, too many children are taught that guns confer power and can and should be used to intimidate other people. (Relatedly, any time I write about gun control, at least one gun owner emails to say he’d love to shoot me, which is not exactly evidence of responsible gun ownership.)

Mass shooters often begin with a grievance — toward certain populations, individuals they feel wronged by, society at large — and escalate their behavior from fantasizing about violence to planning actual attacks. A study from 2019 suggests that feeling inadequate may make gun owners more inclined toward violence. In the study, gun owners were given a task to perform and then told that they failed it. Later they were asked a number of questions, including whether they would be willing to kill someone who broke into their home, even if the intruder was leaving. “We found that the experience of failure increased participants’ view of guns as a means of empowerment,” wrote one researcher , “and enhanced their readiness to shoot and kill a home intruder.”

The study hypothesized that these gun owners “may be seeking a compensatory means to interact more effectively with their environment.”

Good parents model healthy interactions all the time. If their kids are struggling with a sense of inferiority or are having trouble dealing with failure, we teach them self-confidence and resilience. Parents who treat guns as a mechanism for feeling more significant and powerful are modeling an extremely dangerous way to interact with their environment.

What’s particularly hypocritical here is that the most strident defenders of this culture skew conservative and talk a lot about what isn’t appropriate for children and teenagers. What they think is inappropriate often includes educating kids about sex, about the fact that some people are gay or transsexual and about racism. It’s a perverse state of affairs: Exposing children to simple facts is dangerous, but exposing them to machines designed to kill is not. You can’t get your driver’s license until you’re a teenager, or buy cigarettes and alcohol until you’re 21, but much earlier than that, kids can, with adult supervision, legally learn how to end someone’s life.

Parents can’t ensure that their child won’t ever feel inferior or disempowered, or even in some cases become delusional or filled with rage. Teenagers do things that their parents would never anticipate every day, even if they’re close and communicative. Some develop serious drug habits or become radicalized into extremism or take their own lives.

One thing parents can ensure is that their children cannot get access to a gun in their house. The only foolproof way to do that is to ensure that there’s no gun in the house to begin with. Barring that, parents can make sure they are not reinforcing a toxic gun culture that says that displaying and threatening to use lethal machines is a reasonable way to deal with anger or adversity. That message makes the idea of killing someone seem almost ordinary.

That doesn’t prevent school shooters; it primes them.

Elizabeth Spiers, a contributing Opinion writer, is a journalist and digital media strategist.

Source photographs by CSA-Printstock and John Storey, via Getty Images.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook , Instagram , TikTok , WhatsApp , X and Threads .

Essay on Gun Violence

Gun violence is a multifaceted phenomenon that needs a sustainable solution for a better life within the society. The United States has the highest number of gun violence cases in the world among the developed nations. The use of guns within the community is a matter that continues to draw the attention of security agencies as the weapons are misused. Mass shootings have claimed the lives of many within the society, especially in the United States (Beland and Kim 113). Laws that govern the use of guns within the United States have failed to combat the levels of gun violence to desirable levels. The paper aims to study the issue of gun violence, why there are high levels of gun violence, the effects of gun violence in the United States, and recommend possible solutions to combat the vice. Understanding the underlying nature of the issue can help formulate formidable strategies to control acts of violence regarding guns.

It is essential to understand the root cause of the high levels of gun violence, especially in the United States. Statistics indicate that 36% of adults in the United States own a gun. Equally, many homes in the country can acquire a firearm for their own protection. The first reason why gun violence has increased in the United States is the policies in place to control the use of such weapons. The gun policy allows many homes to acquire a licensed handgun for security, exposing the society too risks associated with gun violence. The controversy behind the solution to such a vice lies in the hands of citizens. Many argue in support of the gun policy, stating that an armed population is a polite society. An increase in the number of guns on the public hand doubles the chances of gun violence. Such violence has been witnessed in schools, streets, churches, and other places on several occasions. Equally, reducing the number of guns that circulate in the hands of the public can help control the vice.

Second, developmental issues for children are a factor that increases gun violence in the United States. For instance, when a kid grows knowing that the only way to have something is through violence, it becomes a habit, which endangers the lives of the rest in the society. Most low and middle-class individuals in the states own guns for protection. Such weapons end up getting exposed to their children, which affects them psychologically. Children who have witnessed gun violence at a young age might develop mental issues, according to research. The dependency on guns for protection among minorities and the rich have led to increased gun violence in the United States. Children who develop mental issues might end up using their weapons violently at an adult age. Poorly brought up children can apply gun violence as a tool for having their way whenever they get angry. Also, adults with mental issues have increased their misuse across different fronts (McGinty, et al. 406).

A majority of the American population with guns are men. This is an indication that gender and culture play a key role in shaping the gun policy within the United States. There is a need for the country to find an explanation as to why men are always perpetrators in cases that involve gun violence. Such an indication can lead the society to conclude that culture promotes the tendency of men to use guns violently (Kalesan, Bindu, et al. 216). Women are rarely victims of circumstances in incidences on gun violence. The link between violence and the male ego should be unearthed for better solution determination in the society. Perceptions in the society indicate that psychological therapy can help change the mentality for a better nation. The American culture thrives in a community that believes that guns are meant for men, and women should not use them. The notion has since changed as women have equal rights as men to own a gun for protection. The issue has increased gun violence, even among couples.

Drugs and smuggling of products into the United States is a significant contributor to increased gun violence. For instance, when individuals are transporting drugs, they kill anybody who comes their way, increasing cases of gun-related violence. Gun violence, smuggling, and selling of drugs are all interrelated as the weapons are required to threaten and protect. Controlling the sale of drugs within the country can help reduce gun violence to a large extent. Regions that are mostly affected are those located along the borders, where smuggling is a common vice. The result of such acts is aggravated gun violence that has claimed many lives of Americans each year.

It is essential to highlight the effects of gun violence in the contemporary society, especially within the US. First, increased gun violence in the United States has scared foreign students who aspire to study in the country (Butts, et al. 39). There are numerous individuals from other parts of the world who have the ambition to study in the US. Such aspirations are thwarted by increased acts of gun violence in the country. The foreign learners cite insecurity and gun violence as the deterring reason. Most of the learners end up joining other institutions in other countries where the guardians feel they are safer. International students need an assurance from institutions and the nations that they intend to study in. Gun parents become terrified of their children getting involved in gun violence, which scares them off. Increased cases of gun violence thwart efforts to achieve a sustainable strategy in addressing multicultural education.

Psychological trauma for many who witness gun violence is a significant setback associated with the vice. Trauma can affect the functioning of a person and even lead to mental illness in the eventuality. There is no criterion correctly set to identify an individual who is likely to use a gun violently and one who will not. As such, it is difficult to issue firearms on that basis, which makes it hard to control the increased cases of gun violence. If a model that could indicate probability, it would be exceedingly appropriate in the fight to reduce gun violence in the United States. Trauma is affecting the development of children in school and their performance in general. It is stigmatizing to witness shootings in a learning setting, especially for minors in the institution. Most students in the United States become scared upon such shootings that end up affecting them mentally in their life (Stark and Shah 84). As such, gun violence has instilled trauma in the lives of children who fear the same might happen to them.

Criminal activities have increased in the recent past in the event of gun violence. The guns that are let loose to the public are causing havoc among the public. Homicide cases are over 100 lives in a day, which raises concerns over the use of guns. Besides the high number of deaths, gun violence leaves many victims injured and some paralyzed for life. Most of such cases are controllable if the victim cannot have access to a firearm. Research indicates that there are over 36000 intentional deaths that result from gun violence per year within the United States. Equally, gun violence leaves over 100000 unintended injuries to people in the United States each year (Malina, Debra, et al. 175). The numbers are high, indicating the essence of reducing gun accessibility to individuals. For instance, it is important to note that many gun violence cases get worse without being reported. The numbers mentioned are estimates, and the actual figures might go higher if unreported cases are counted.

Gun violence has impacted education negatively by disrupting learning activities within institutions in the United States. A recent study indicates that since 2013 and 2018, 405 incidents of gunfire were reported on institutional grounds. Most of the attacks, roughly 260, were conducted in elementary, middle, or high school level institutions of learning (Malina, et al.175). The 260 attacks claimed the lives of 109 people leaving 219 injured. The remaining cases were mass shootings, assaults, and homicides within the same period. The events of Sandy Hooks and Parkland are indications that there might be more shootings in schools to witness. Shootings that happen in schools compromise the security of both students and staff, which should be prioritized. When such shootings go down, learning is affected due to the disruption caused. Gun violence in schools should be prohibited in a bid to boost education in the multicultural context (Katsiyannis, Whitford and Ennis 1562).

Black children in the states experience much of gun violence than white children. According to research, black children are 14 times more likely to die by a gun as compared to their white counterparts. Equally, black children are ten times more vulnerable to firearm injuries than white children. Both white and black children can live in the same city and experience gun violence in different ways. Gun violence is mostly associated with poverty-stricken populations with little or no basic education (Alcorn 124). Most of such individuals from such societies are unemployed, which makes them resolve to use guns as a means of making money. A society that has been stricken by concentrated disadvantages is more susceptible to gun violence. Societies that have much of the white population do not face such challenges as the live modest lives. Children from such homes are protected hence they do not face gun violence. Exposing growing children to gun violence affects their learning, which might result in mental conditions.

Gun violence attracts medical costs that are high for individuals, as the injuries are unexpected. For instance, in the year 2010, a total of 36000 people visited public hospitals for treatment from gun injuries. The total approximated cost of dealing with injuries as a result of gun violence rose to $630 million, much of it, which was paid by taxpayer’s money. Such resources can be used to better other sectors of the economy within the States if gun violence can be contained. Also, gun violence makes many people in the States live in fear due to increased crime and shootings.

There is a need for governments to establish a sustainable strategy that can help control the incidences of gun violence in the United States and the world collectively. The first approach that should help reduce the impact is gun policy. Governments should implement policies that discourage ownership of firearms within their territories. For instance, if the cost of a gun is higher than that of a car, many individuals could not easily possess one. Such legislation can help reduce ownership among ordinary citizens, which makes the society safer. The process of acquiring a licensed gun in the states should be done rigorously to help issue firearms to the right people. Equally, lifting the age of gun ownership from 18 to 21 can help reduce gun violence among the youth. Policies that are stringent on gun violence can minimize the chances of deaths and injuries as a result of gun violence.

Second, training is necessary for those who would wish to obtain a licensed firearm. With poor training, gun accidents increase, which risks the safety of people in the United States. There are incidents of gun violence that arise as a result of inappropriate skills of using the weapons. Statistics indicate that unskilled individuals are more likely to cause gun violence than those who are used to, especially in the military. Gun violence is threatening many in the streets and developmental programs in learning institutions. As such, training those who are licensed using firearms can help fix the mess related to gun violence. Untrained firearms owners should return them until they obtain the necessary knowledge on how to handle a firearm. The move can help reduce gun violence, which is claiming numerous lives.

Behavior control can help control the use of firearms in the United States. For instance, if people undergo psychological processes to determine their fitness to use firearms, then there is a likelihood that the number of violence cases reported will drop. Policies in place do not stipulate the basis for issuing an individual a gun. Equally, the set regulations do not weigh the capability of a licensed individual causing violence before issuing them with one. Children who are developing should be trained on how to become good people in the society and avoid violence. As such, learning institutions should be at the forefront of the fight against gun violence in the United States.

To sum it, gun violence is a matter that has led to many deaths in the United States for decades now. Blacks and minority groups are the most exposed communities likely to experience gun violence daily. Children are vulnerable to gun violence, as most cases have happened on the grounds of various schools. The US registers the highest number of fatalities associated with gun violence among developed countries. The gun policy in the country has contributed significantly to the increased violence of firearms. Not everybody should be allowed to have a gun in the country. Reduced exposure of the society to guns can help reduce the mass shootings that have claimed the lives of many in the United States. Policies that ensure sustainable containment of gun violence can help restore sanity in the society. Minorities groups are more vulnerable to gun violence than their white counterparts. As such, there is an urgent need to establish mechanisms of combating gun violence in the American context.

Works Cited

Alcorn, Ted. “Trends in research publications about gun violence in the United States, 1960 to 2014.”  JAMA internal medicine  177.1 (2017): 124-126.

Beland, Louis-Philippe, and Dongwoo Kim. “The effect of high school shootings on schools and student performance.”  Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis  38.1 (2016): 113-126.

Butts, Jeffrey A., et al. “Cure violence: a public health model to reduce gun violence.”  Annual review of public health  36 (2015): 39-53.

Kalesan, Bindu, et al. “Gun ownership and social gun culture.”  Injury prevention  22.3 (2016): 216-220.

Katsiyannis, Antonis, Denise K. Whitford, and Robin Parks Ennis. “Historical Examination of United States Intentional Mass School Shootings in the 20 th and 21 st Centuries: Implications for Students, Schools, and Society.”  Journal of Child and Family Studies  27.8 (2018): 2562-2573.

Malina, Debra, et al. “Rooting out gun violence.” (2016): 175-176.

McGinty, Emma E., et al. “News media framing of serious mental illness and gun violence in the United States, 1997-2012.”  American Journal of Public Health  104.3 (2014): 406-413.

Stark, David E., and Nigam H. Shah. “Funding and publication of research on gun violence and other leading causes of death.”  Jama  317.1 (2017): 84-85.

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Gun Control Essay: Goals, Topics, And How to Write

13 October, 2020

14 minutes read

Author:  Mathieu Johnson

The issue of gun control is yet one of the top topics for heated debates. Some people have rather a negative opinion regarding gun control; others support it and believe that loose gun control rules lead to violence and devastation. And since the topic of gun control is represented by a multitude of contrasting opinions, it might be the topic for your next college paper.

The subject of gun control is an ongoing question, that is why many students either get assigned  a gun control essay or do so for personal motives. What to include in your gun control essay and how to outline your ideas? You can find the answers to your questions in this guide.

Gun Control Essay: Definitions, Goals & Topics

Once you get assigned a gun control essay, you first need to make sure that you fully understand what a paper’s main idea is. As you can tell from the name ‘gun control essay’, such an essay asks you to indicate your opinion regarding restrictive regulations of gun use and production. While most countries have been limiting gun possession to minimize the risk of innocent people dying, the USA hasn’t. On the contrary, the US has persuasive gun control, meaning that almost anyone can buy and hold a gun. Many people share an idea that gun possession should be limited and permitted only to particular categories of people, that is why the question is very ongoing.  So the most critical goal of a gun control essay is to present reasonable ideas about why people need or don’t need gun control. 

Some of the compelling and relevant topics for a gun control essay may be:

• Gun ownership promotes violence among young people
• Gun ownership is unlikely to prevent some people from murdering 
• Gun possession as the only way to protect oneself
• The wide accessibility of guns is the reason for suicides in the US

Gun Control Essay Titles

When writing a pro gun control essay, your initial task is to pick an intriguing, catchy title. You shouldn’t underestimate the importance of such a step if your goal is to attract the reader’s attention and make them aware of a topic. The thing to keep in mind is intriguing the audience and making them willing to take a deep dive into the subject. If you have no precise vision of which title to choose, take a look at a few tips we prepared for you.

First and foremost, you need to have a precise position regarding gun control in America. Are you a supporter, or are you firmly against gun control? Since there is yet a heated debate on this issue in the USA, you can decide to write either a for or against essay on gun control. 

Titles supporting gun control: 

• Violence has never solved any problem
• Guns out of control: why should innocent people die?
• Youth violence as the result of no gun control

Titles opposing gun control:

• Gun control won’t prevent people from killing 
• Gun control: why should we sacrifice our lives just because we can’t defend ourselves?
• Illegal weapons trade as the only guaranteed outcome of gun control.

Gun Control Essay Structure

Most likely, you already know that a good structure largely predicts the success of a gun control argumentative essay. Whenever you are willing to present your opinion on a specific issue and want to convince the audience that your arguments are valid, you should sound logical. The ultimate way to make your gun control essay structure coherent and comprehensive is to draw an outline and plan the essay thoroughly. To assure that your argumentative essay on gun control communicates your idea to the reader, make sure to follow the structure that includes an introduction, body paragraphs, and conclusion.

Introduction 

It would help if you organized your gun control essay introduction in a way that serves as an attention grabber. Namely, you can feel free to include some rhetorical question at the beginning or literally any good essay hook. To grab the reader’s attention, you may also outline some background information so that a reader grasps the idea of your gun control persuasive essay. And last but not least, don’t forget to introduce the most important part of a gun control essay outline – a thesis statement. A sound thesis statement gives a reader a general understanding of what you will cover in your essay.

Main body paragraphs’ role is to reveal what you mentioned in the thesis statement. Since your gun control essay will most likely be argumentative, you need to devote one paragraph to one argument. In each and every body paragraph, your main task is to build on some solid evidence and refer to numbers or facts to protect your position. It is better to include 3-5 body paragraphs so that the gun control essay doesn’t look messy. 

When writing a gun control essay conclusion, you should avoid adding any extra information. Try to be very precise and make sure you restate the arguments you have indicated before. All in all, your gun control essay should logically end up with a summary of all the points. The reader has to be 100% sure that he or she fully comprehended your idea. 

Best Tips For Writing Gun Control Essay

An outline is everything.

Create an outline even if you think that this step isn’t indeed necessary. Even when you have all those sparkling ideas and structure in your mind, it requires no effort to confuse them. And if we talk about an argumentative essay, it is fundamental for you as a writer to sound convincing and confident. An outline helps you to sound so. Hence, don’t neglect dedicating a few minutes to creating a helpful essay plan.  

Find some convincing evidence 

The goal of any gun control essay is to communicate an idea of why strict gun control is necessary or should be abandoned. After reading your essay, the audience will form an exact opinion: gun control is either good or bad. Try to search for some substantial evidence, numbers, particular cases that you find helpful while supporting your arguments. Otherwise, you undermine the chances of being heard. 

Write about the topic that bothers you 

Don’t try to figure up titles and topics that aren’t interesting for you. The point of a gun control essay is to make your voice heard and to be sincere while presenting your ideas. Try to give some ideas the way you see them, discuss only those topics that cannot let you stay indifferent. Only in this way will you end up with an excellent essay. 

Edit and proofread

Once your essay is ready, don’t forget to proofread it and check it at least twice. So many excellent essays get a terrible score just because some minor mistakes spoiled the general impression! You can use a wide array of means to make sure your paper is polished: ask your friends to check it, use online tools, or ask a professional essay writing and editing service to get your paper checked by an expert.

Gun Control Essay Examples

If you feel like you need to refer to an example to get a profound insight into an idea of a gun control essay, here is one for you.  

Strict gun control deprives people of their legal rights

The US is the country in which the share of people who own a gun is impressively high. Besides, there is no single country in the world that can be compared to the US by the number of firearms in the citizen’s hands. According to the official statistics, 80 percent of adults own a gun, meaning that the likelihood of  a stranger you come across in the street possessing one are unbelievably significant. Recently, several regulations attempted to restrict gun possession to impose gun control. However, gun control is not only unjustifiable, but it also deprives people of their right for self-defence and peaceful life.

First and foremost, gun control, unfortunately, does not reduce the murder and crime rates in the US. Although it should generally hold true, the statistics contradict the misbelief that limiting gun possession minimizes the number of crimes committed. The research on weapon ban which was carried out during the past twenty years demonstrates that there is no correlation between reducing gun ownership and a falling number of murder cases. The research also indicated that the states that imposed strict gun control have witnessed a larger number of crimes.

This all leads to the conclusion that imposing a ban on gun possession is not a way to fight crime. Also, as the evidence shows, the number of guns in the US had been steadily growing in the last century, and this coincided with a decrease in the number of crimes committed. Essentially, gun control is unlikely to resolve the issue of crimes, since some people are likely to commit crimes even when they have no gun at their disposal.

Another argument against gun control is that the first inevitably infringe the citizen’s rights, Namely, banning weapons contradicts the right that the constitution of the US guarantees. According to the second amendment, under no circumstances should the citizen’s rights to possess a gun  be infringed. The right to own a gun had already existed long before many countries appeared on the map. That is why many people deem gun control as a crime against humanity. Even though there is yet some logical explanation to an attempt to control gun usage and manufacturing, it still deprives US citizens of their inviolable right.

What is even more, the supreme court together with the constitution considers gun ownership as one of the liberties that all the US citizens have. Just like the freedom of speech, the space to protect oneself is crucial, and it should remain untouchable. Introducing gun control, therefore, leads to violating people’s freedom and liberties since people become incapable of even defending themselves in their property.

Gun control robs people of the right for safety and self-defence. Imposing strict gun regulations will inevitably make millions of people incapable of defending themselves if something threatens their and their close ones’ lives. According to the data represented by the National Rifle Association, the number of cases of gun usage solely for self-defence purposes equals 2.5 million times annually. People use guns to protect their families and property, but, apparently, the states find the self-defence motive weak enough. If they impose strict gun control, it means that these 2.5 million people may literally sacrifice their lives and die just because they couldn’t hold a gun legally.

The truth is, the Police are physically incapable of protecting all the people who need protection, so these people are bound to defend themselves on their own. But how to protect yourself  if you cannot even possess a gun? So far, using a weapon for self-defence has proved to be the most effective way . Therefore, depriving people of the right for self-defence or for saving other people in trouble is inhumane and unjustified.

Overall, gun control has lately become a hot topic that has both its advocates and opponents. So far, the evidence against gun control is very reasonable and convincing. Gun control robs the citizens of their exceptional right – the right to protect themselves and those in danger. Besides, gun control contradicts the second amendment, which guarantees the right to possess a gun for adult US citizens. Finally, it is unlikely to reduce the crime rate as the science hasn’t yet found any valid proof for that.

Write a Gun Control Essay with HandmadeWriting

Composing a brilliant essay about gun control is somewhat challenging due to the peculiarity of this topic. But this is not something above your capacity. Keeping all the tips in mind as well as following a precise gun control essay structure will significantly facilitate the writing process. And if you need help with writing or editing – HandmadeWriting will have you covered! At any time of day and night, essay writers at HandmadeWriting work hard to deliver top-quality papers and support students from all over the world. So if you’re struggling with your essay, feel free to get in touch with us. 

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Persuasive Essay About Gun Control

Read Excellent Examples of Persuasive Essay About Gun Control

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Are you looking for inspiration for your persuasive essay about gun control? You are at the right place!

Gun control is a controversial but common topic for students. But with so many arguments on both sides, students often find it challenging.

However, reading some sample essays can be a good start! 

This blog provides several example essays on the topic of gun control that you can read for inspiration. Moreover, you'll get tips to help you craft your own persuasive essay about the topic.

So let’s get started!

• 1. Persuasive Essay Examples on Gun Control 
• 2. Persuasive Essay Against Gun Control
• 3. Persuasive Essay on Pro-Gun Control
• 4. Argumentative Essay About Gun Control
• 5. Steps to Write a Persuasive Essay
• 6. Persuasive Essay Topics about Gun Control

Persuasive Essay Examples on Gun Control 

Start with these general persuasive essay samples on gun control. They will help you understand what makes a good gun control essay.

Check out these examples:

Persuasive Essay about Gun Control

Persuasive Essay Examples Gun Control

Want persuasive examples on other topics? Check out our persuasive essay examples blog to find samples on a variety of topics.

Persuasive Essay Against Gun Control

Check out these few examples of anti-gun control essays. These will help you understand the arguments of those who are against gun control.

Why Gun Control is Bad

Argumentative Essay Against Gun Control

Check out this short video below on the pros and cons of gun control to find good arguments for both sides.

Persuasive Essay on Pro-Gun Control

Some people believe that stricter gun control laws should be a priority to prevent gun violence. Here are some examples that will introduce you to their arguments in detail.

Why We Need Gun Control Essay

The Pros of Gun Control Essay

Free Persuasive Essay on Gun Control

Argumentative Essay About Gun Control

An argumentative essay about gun control is a paper that looks at both sides of the debate on this important issue. The goal is to make sure that you can support your position with facts, figures, and logical arguments.

Read these argumentative essay examples about gun control to see how it's done!

Steps to Write a Persuasive Essay

Now that you have read some good examples of persuasive essays about gun control, it's time for you to start writing your own paper.

But how exactly do you write a good essay by yourself? Here are some steps you should follow:

Step 1- Research the Topic

Before you start writing your essay, it’s important to do some research on gun control.

Read up on the different arguments and viewpoints on the issue to get a better understanding of what you are discussing. Gather as many facts and evidence as you need.

Make sure to take notes, so you can cite anything you use later.

Step 2- Make an Outline

Having a persuasive essay outline will help you stay organized and on track.

Start by making an outline of the main points you want to discuss in your essay. Then, break it down into subsections with specific facts and arguments.

In short, make sure to create a clear structure for your essay.

Step 3- Take a Stance

After doing your research, decide which side of the debate you agree with. Choose one side of the debate. Decide if you're going to argue for or against gun control. Make sure to choose an opinion that you can defend with logical arguments. Moreover, stay consistent throughout your paper about your stance.

Step 4- Support Your Arguments

When making your arguments, make sure to back them up with evidence. Use data, statistics, and quotes from experts to strengthen your points. In addition, you should use rhetorical strategies such as ethos, pathos, and logos to make your essay more effective.

Step 5- Address the Opposition  

Make sure to address any counterarguments that you come across while researching or writing your essay. This will show your readers that you have done your research and considered both sides of the argument.

Step  6- Proofread and Revise

Before submitting your paper, make sure to proofread for any mistakes or typos. Having a second pair of eyes look over your work can help catch any errors that you may have missed.

Take your time to revise and edit your essay. Make sure that each point is clearly laid out and supported with facts, figures, and logic. This is important to make sure that the essay is compelling and error-free!

Persuasive Essay Topics about Gun Control

Wondering which gun topic you should write about? Here are a few persuasive essay topics related to gun control that you can choose.

• The Impact of Stricter Gun Control Laws on Reducing Gun Violence
• The Role of Background Checks in Preventing Firearms Access for Criminals
• Mental Health and Gun Control: Addressing the Connection
• Gun Control vs. Second Amendment Rights: Finding a Balance
• The Necessity of Banning Assault Weapons for Public Safety
• Why Gun Control Won’t End School Shootings
• The Influence of Lobbying Groups like the NRA on Gun Control Policies
• The International Perspective: Comparing Gun Control Measures in Different Countries
• How Can Gun Control Help Suicide Prevention
• The Economics of Gun Control: Analyzing the Costs and Benefits of Stricter Regulations

Want persuasive topics on other subjects? Check out our list of 200+ engaging and interesting persuasive essay topics to get topic ideas.

To sum it up for you,

Gun control is an important issue that needs to be discussed in our society. The example essays in this blog have helped to show different arguments for and against gun control. In addition, you got some useful steps on how to write a persuasive essay about this topic.

Whether you are for or against gun control, make sure to conduct thorough research and use evidence when writing your paper.

So keep these steps in mind and start writing your own gun control essay today!

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Essay Samples on Gun Violence

Examining the pros and cons of gun control.

The debate surrounding gun control has been a longstanding and contentious issue, with proponents and opponents presenting valid arguments from their respective standpoints. This essay delves into the multifaceted discussion by exploring the pros and cons of gun control policies, shedding light on the complexities...

• Gun Control
• Gun Violence

The Auckland Mass Shooting: a Tragedy at the Women's World Cup 2023

On the morning of July 20th, 2023, Auckland, New Zealand suffered a devastating mass shooting that left three dead and several others injured. This tragic event occurred just hours before the opening ceremonies of the Women's World Cup, set to be held in Auckland that...

• Mass Shooting

The Shooting of Ralph Yarl: Unraveling the Racial Dynamics and Gun Violence

On April 13, 2023, a tragic incident occurred in Kansas City, Missouri that garnered national attention. 16-year-old Ralph Yarl, an African American teenager, was shot and wounded after mistakenly ringing the doorbell at the wrong house while attempting to pick up his younger twin brothers....

• Racial Profiling

The Gun Control Laws And Gun Violence In America

Have you ever stopped to suppose about how scary it would experience and be like to lose a household members or close friends loss of life innocently, because they had been victims of a gun shooting? Having to never being capable to talk to them...

• American Criminal Justice System

The Link Between Violence In Video Games And Gun Violence In America

Gun violence is something that is taking place every minute that passes by. According to the CDC, Every 17 minutes one person is killed by a firearm which brings to 87 people during an average day, and 609 every week (CDC 2019). Almost 50% of...

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The Rise Of Gun Violence Because Of Video Game Violence

A constant threat of violence lurked from January 2019 to May 2019. A ridiculous eight school shootings would occur, each varying in intensity. The United States was on edge, looking for a reason why their children had to risk their lives in order to pursue...

• Video Games
• Violence in Video Games

Gun Violence In America: Protection Of Citizen Rights

The United States Constitution promises that the government will protect citizens and their natural-born rights. The second amendment states“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed”...

• Violent Crime

Gun Violence In America: The Issue Of Mass Shootings

When you turn on the news, there are frequent reports of mass shootings and gun violence. Families are heart broken after their loved ones have been killed. This is the sad and disturbing reality in our country. Olivia Wesch woke up on February 14 excited...

The Risk Of Increased Homicide Rates Due To Gun Violence In America

Gun violence is a public health tragedy that affects millions of lives in the United States every year (Christensen, Cunningham, Delamater, & Hamilton, 2019). It is a problem because its complex nature and frequency of occurrence have a considerable impact on the health and safety...

On Gun Violence In America: The Need For Action

Guns are violence, these three words usually hear when it comes to weapons. During the last few years and among US history there has been an issue with gun control, causing it to fall in the wrong hands and therefore end in mass shootings or...

The Advertisement Analysis Of The Anti Gun Violence Campaign

Living in a country where assault weapons are so easily accessible is scary. Parents all over America, fear sending their kids places because of this, even places where they should feel most safe, school. On December 14th, 2012, innocent children’s lives were taken at Sandy...

• Advertising Analysis

The Need To Ban Guns To Decrease Gun Violence In America

In the US, what is your biggest concern right now? For me, it's gun violence. Through the Second Amendment of the Constitution, people have a right to own a gun. There was research from Gallup in 2017, there was 43% of people in the United...

Gun Violence And Gun Control: The Influence On America

When thinking of America, many people recall the great things one loves about this country. People can explain the many ways to achieve lifelong dreams and goals. They are able to ramble about the vacation spots, business opportunities, and celebrities who reside in America. What...

Dissecting Obama's Speech On School Shooting And Gun Violence

More than 1,700 children and teenagers die in the U.S every year as a result of gun violence. the deaths are much higher for black children (Every Town, 2020). Many of these children die as a result of school shootings that have become more prevalent...

• Barack Obama
• Public School

Gun Violence In America: Inexcusable Death Rates And Shootings

We are never going to get a serious grip on gun violence in this country until we adopt comprehensive measures to keep guns away from people who should not have them,” (Reno). The United States government has neglected to counteract the issue of the developing...

Gun Control Laws On Gun Violence In America

The swelling number of gun violence in the United States, is an alarming situation faced by this great nation, that has led to many innocent civilian, getting affected by it. According to Amnesty International, every year, nearly 30,000 people are killed due to the escalation...

The Problem of Gun Violence in America

In today’s society, one of the major problems that we face is gun violence. Gun violence is related to violence that can be considered criminal, however, some cases aren’t considered criminal. In data collected by the FBI showed that firearms were used in sixty-eight percent...

Columbine Shooting and Relation to Gun Violence in America in Bowling for Columbine

“It was the morning of April 20th, 1999, and it was pretty much like any other morning in America...And out in Littleton, Colorado, two boys went bowling at six in the morning. Yes, it was a typical day in the United States of America.” (Moore,...

• Bowling For Columbine
• Documentary

Second Amendment: Gun Violence Statistics

Introduction The right to bear arms was inserted into the constitution and has been something that has remained in place today. With all the violence and deaths by guns that has been occurring throughout the United States in the past decade, it has caused law...

• Constitution
• Second Amendment

Gun Violence And Mass Shooting In The United States

The world is being taken over by gun violence, on average 96 people are killed by guns in the United States every day. I will be comparing the number of gun violence and mass shooting in the United States over a long period of time...

Best topics on Gun Violence

1. Examining the Pros and Cons of Gun Control

2. The Auckland Mass Shooting: a Tragedy at the Women’s World Cup 2023

3. The Shooting of Ralph Yarl: Unraveling the Racial Dynamics and Gun Violence

4. The Gun Control Laws And Gun Violence In America

5. The Link Between Violence In Video Games And Gun Violence In America

6. The Rise Of Gun Violence Because Of Video Game Violence

7. Gun Violence In America: Protection Of Citizen Rights

8. Gun Violence In America: The Issue Of Mass Shootings

9. The Risk Of Increased Homicide Rates Due To Gun Violence In America

10. On Gun Violence In America: The Need For Action

11. The Advertisement Analysis Of The Anti Gun Violence Campaign

12. The Need To Ban Guns To Decrease Gun Violence In America

13. Gun Violence And Gun Control: The Influence On America

14. Dissecting Obama’s Speech On School Shooting And Gun Violence

15. Gun Violence In America: Inexcusable Death Rates And Shootings

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• School Shooting
• Criminal Procedure

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The independent source for health policy research, polling, and news.

Americans’ Experiences With Gun-Related Violence, Injuries, And Deaths

Shannon Schumacher , Ashley Kirzinger , Marley Presiado , Isabelle Valdes , and Mollyann Brodie Published: Apr 11, 2023

• Methodology

Key Findings

• Experiences with gun-related incidents are common among U.S. adults. One in five (21%) say they have personally been threatened with a gun, a similar share (19%) say a family member was killed by a gun (including death by suicide), and nearly as many (17%) have personally witnessed someone being shot. Smaller shares have personally shot a gun in self-defense (4%) or been injured in a shooting (4%). In total, about half (54%) of all U.S. adults say they or a family member have ever had one of these experiences.
• Gun-related injuries and deaths, as well as worries about gun violence, disproportionately affect people of color in the U.S. Three in ten Black adults (31%) have personally witnessed someone being shot, as have one-fifth of Hispanic adults (22%). One-third of Black adults (34%) have a family member who was killed by a gun, twice the share of White adults who say the same (17%). In addition, one-third of Black adults (32%) and Hispanic adults (33%) say they worry either “every day,” or “almost every day” about themselves or someone they love being a victim of gun violence (compared to one in ten White adults). And one in five Black adults (20%) and Hispanic adults (18%) feel like gun-related crimes, deaths, and injuries are a “constant threat” to their local community, more than double the share among White adults (8%).
• The majority (84%) of U.S. adults say they have taken at least one precaution to protect themselves or their families from the possibility of gun violence, including nearly six in ten (58%) who have talked to their children or other family members about gun safety, and more than four in ten who have purchased a weapon other than a gun, such as a knife or pepper spray (44%), or attended a gun safety class or practiced shooting a gun (41%). About a third (35%) have avoided large crowds, such as music festivals, or crowded bars and clubs to protect themselves or their families from the possibility of gun violence. Three in ten (29%) have purchased a gun to protect themselves or their family from the possibility of gun violence. Smaller shares, but still at least one in seven, have avoided using public transit (23%), changed or considered changing the school that their child attends (20%), avoided attending religious services, cultural events or celebrations (15%), or moved to a different neighborhood or city (15%).
• One in seven (14%) adults say a doctor or other health care provider has asked if they own a gun or if there are guns in the home, while about one in four (26%) parents of children under 18 say their child’s pediatrician has asked them about guns in the home. Few (5%) adults say a doctor or other health care provider has ever talked to them about gun safety.
• Four in ten (41%) adults report living in a household with a gun. Among this group, more than half say at least one gun in their home is stored in the same location as the ammunition (52%), 44% say a gun is stored in an unlocked location, and more than one-third report a gun is stored loaded (36%). Overall, three in four (75%) adults living in households with guns say any of their guns are stored in one of these ways, representing three in ten overall adults (31%). About four in ten (44%) parents of children under age 18 say there is a gun in their household. Among parents with guns in their home, about one-third say a gun is stored loaded (32%) or stored in an unlocked location (32%). More than half of parents (61%) say any gun in their homes is stored in the same location as ammunition.

Many Say They Or A Family Member Have Experienced Or Witnessed A Shooting, Or Have Been Threatened With A Gun

The latest polling from KFF finds a majority (54%) of U.S. adults have either personally or had a family member who has been impacted by a gun-related incident, such as witnessing a shooting, being threatened by gun, or being injured or killed by a gun. When asked about their own personal experience, one in five report that they have been threatened with a gun (21%), while nearly as many (17%) say they have witnessed someone being shot. Small but important shares report experiencing other gun-related incidents, including 4% who have been injured by a gun, and 4% who have shot a gun in self-defense. The share who have shot a gun in self-defense rises to 18% among adults whose current or past job included the use of guns, such as military or law enforcement work.

When asked about their family members, about three in ten adults (31%) say they have a family member who has been threatened with a gun, while a similar share (28%) say a family member has witnessed someone being shot. One in five (20%) adults say a family member has been injured by a gun, and 19% say a family member has been killed by a gun, including death by suicide. About half of deaths (55%) in the U.S. involving guns are suicides .

People Of Color Are More Likely To Report Experiencing Gun-Related Incidents, More Likely To Worry About And Feel Less Safe From Gun Violence

The latest KFF poll finds experiences with shootings are pervasive but even more commonly reported among people of color. While many factors, such as income, education, age, gender, and where they live can play a role in people’s experiences with gun-related incidents and worries about gun violence, race and ethnicity consistently is one of the strongest demographic predictors of both experiences and worries. 1

Black adults (31%) are about twice as likely as White adults (14%) to say they have personally witnessed someone being shot and are also twice as likely to have a family member who has been killed by a gun (34% compared to 17% of White adults). Appendix Table 1 shows each reported incidence asked about by racial and ethnic groups.

Black adults are more Likely To Report Being Worried About Being victims of gun violence, see gun violence as a constant threat

While a majority of adults (82%) say they worry “sometimes” or less often that they or someone they love will be a victim of gun violence, small but important shares say they worry either “every day,” (8%) or “almost every day” (10%) about this. Larger shares of Black and Hispanic adults compared to White adults say they frequently worry about themselves or someone they love being a victim of gun violence. One-third of Black adults (32%) and Hispanic adults (33%) say they worry either “every day,” or “almost every day” about themselves or someone they love being a victim of gun violence, compared to one in ten (10%) White adults.

Half (51%) of U.S. adults say gun-related crimes, injuries, and deaths, are a “constant threat” in their local community (11%) or a “major concern but not a constant threat” (40%). Majorities of Black adults (62%) and Hispanic adults (62%) say gun-related activities are either a major concern or a constant threat, while less than half (45%) of White adults say the same. Notably, 8% of White adults say gun-related activity is a constant threat, less than half the share of Black adults (20%) or Hispanic adults (18%) who say the same.

Those living in urban areas are more concerned about the threat of gun-related crimes, injuries, and deaths compared to those living in other types of areas. About six in ten (62%) adults living in urban areas say gun activity is a constant threat or a major concern, compared to about half (48%) of those who live in suburban areas and about three in ten (29%) rural adults.

Overall, most adults say they feel either “very” (41%) or “somewhat” (41%) safe from gun violence in their neighborhoods. The groups most likely to say they feel “not too safe” or “not safe at all” from gun violence in their neighborhood are also among the groups most likely to say they worry about someone they love being a victim of gun violence. One in six (17%) Black adults say they feel “not safe at all” from gun violence in their neighborhood, a substantially larger share compared to White adults (2%) and nearly twice as many as compared to Hispanic adults (9%).

More Than Eight In Ten Adults Have Taken At Least One Precaution To Protect Themselves Or Their Families From The Possibility Of Gun Violence

Large majorities of adults (84%) say they have taken at least one precaution to protect themselves or their families from the possibility of gun violence. Nearly six in ten (58%) adults say they have talked to their child or other family members about gun safety, including majorities of White adults (62%), Hispanic adults (56%) and Black adults (54%). At least four in ten adults have taken defensive actions, including 44% who say they have purchased a weapon other than a gun, such as a knife, pepper spray, or something else, and 41% who say they have attended a gun safety class or practiced shooting a gun. Nearly half of White adults (47%) say they have taken a gun safety class or practiced shooting a gun, a substantially larger share than Black adults (34%) or Hispanic adults (32%) who say they have done so.

About one in three (35%) adults say they have avoided large crowds, such as music festivals or crowded bars and clubs to help protect themselves or their families from the possibility of gun violence. This figure is driven largely by Black adults, of whom more than half (55%) say they have done this, compared to about four in ten (43%) Hispanic adults and three in ten (29%) White adults.

Public Awareness And Experiences Talking With Health Care Providers About Gun Safety

Few adults say a health care provider has talked to them about gun safety.

In 2016, the American Medical Association (AMA) adopted a policy calling gun violence in the U.S. a “public health crisis” and since then, medical schools have increasingly offered gun-related content to train doctors about how to talk about gun safety with their patients. However, the latest KFF poll finds that more than eight in ten (86%) adults say they have never had a doctor or other health care provider ask if they own a gun or if there are guns in the home. Overall, 5% say a doctor or health care provider has talked with them about gun safety.

Three In Four Adults Living In A Household With A Gun Say It Is Stored Either Unlocked, Loaded, Or In The Same Location As Ammunition

Knowledge on some gun violence facts is somewhat limited.

Despite the ubiquitous news of gun violence in this country and that so many people have experienced gun-related incidents, the public is largely unaware of the extent to which guns are responsible for the deaths of young people and the cause of death in many suicides. About half (49%) of the public is aware that guns are the leading cause of death for children and teenagers ages 1-19 in the U.S , which recently became the case in 2020 according to an analysis of data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Past KFF analysis of CDC and IMHME data has found that the U.S. is alone among peer countries in the number of deaths of children and teens by guns. In no other peer country are guns a top cause of childhood and teenage mortality. In the survey, Black adults (71%) and Hispanic adults (60%) are more likely than White adults (42%) to be aware that guns are the leading cause of death for those under the age of 20 in the U.S.

• Gun Violence
• Tracking Poll
• Public Health
• TOPLINE & METHODOLOGY

news release

• One in Five Adults Say They’ve Had a Family Member Killed by a Gun, Including Suicide, and One in Six Have Witnessed a Shooting; Among Black Adults, a Third Have Experienced Each

Also of Interest

• KFF Health Tracking Poll March 2023: Public Doesn’t Want Politicians To Upend Popular Programs
• Child and Teen Firearm Mortality in the U.S. and Peer Countries
• Firearm Deaths of Children and Adolescents Continued to Rise in 2021, Especially Among Black Youth

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Writing argumentative essay on gun violence.

May 21, 2018

In the recent past, gun violence has taken over the world and more so the USA. In a bid to address this issue, more college facilitators are giving their students tasks that entail working on how to stop gun violence essays. Even so, one question that is lingering in the minds of many people is should guns be banned? A scroll through this article will give you insights on this topic and how to handle such a paper when you are given the task.

How to Stop Gun Violence Content Search

Gun violence is something that is taking place every minute that passes by. Sadly, it is not an act that discriminates race, gender, religion or even age. It goes without saying that perpetrators of gun violence have ulterior motives. However, what is more concerning is the fact that` people of this caliber have access to guns of whatever kind. To put all these thoughts on paper, you need to tackle the topics below: • Guns in America – Talk in brief about the laws that pertain to gun acquisition in America. Explain who can get hand of a rifle and more so the criterion that is considered when someone is soliciting for a gun within the region. When discussing about the gun laws, be sure to talk about the current parliament proceedings in regards to changing or amending them in this gun laws essay. Even more, explain what the previous and current presidents of America think of the situation and how each one them contributed to the current state. • Laws protecting civilians against gun violence – Considering that civilians are the ones on the receiving end of such atrocities, touch a bit on the laws that are put in place to protect them from the same. Explain how these laws came into being, and the events that forced the government to implement them. • The reason behind the increase of gun violence in America – If there is a reason that is leading more people to become victims of the acts, state it. Do not forget to mention whether or not lack of restricting laws is the reason behind the escalating crime instances. • Top victims of gun violence – Give an account of people who have been taken down by gun violence using the statistics available. Help your reader understand in your essay on gun violence why you take the stand. • Why gun violence should be banned – For one talk about the risk having an unlicensed gun as the leading reason for the rise of violence issues in your gun violence essay. Afterwards, elaborate why the crime poses a threat not only to the security of civilians, but also government officials as well as the police and other people responsible for the security of the country. Use life examples of situations that could have been avoided if the ban on gun violence had been reinstated. • How to prevent gun violence – Now that you have established that gun violence is escalating, explain how a state of serenity can be achieved once more. While writing this section of the essay about gun violence, touch on regulating the acquisition of fire arms, putting a death sentence on the perpetrator or placing other hefty penalties if one takes such an action against someone else. Add other items on the list to make it more comprehensive. Remember to give a reason for each suggestion you make and use examples of other places with similar laws and how they have worked.

Other aspects that are essential in this gun violence essay are the introduction and the conclusion. While both are useful, only snippets of what you are to write about or what you have written in the article are found in them. The introduction bit should not be lengthy. One or two paragraphs at most would suffice to explain what the essay on gun violence entails. Write only the most critical details in this part. The conclusion, on the other hand, should only touch briefly on the items of concern that are in the paper. Make it easy to maneuver and understand. Just like the intro, the conclusion needs to be equally short. Elaborated details should be left for the body of the paper. At most, two paragraphs will be enough.

Even with all the guidelines provided above, a time may come when you are not psyched up to do the article on your own. This is where we come in. A quick visit to our online site will have you spoilt for choice. Not only do we give you the chance to pick the writer you prefer, we also avail you the opportunity to select the size of the paper. The price charged for the assistance we provide is reasonable and the delivery of work is done in a timely and professional manner.

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The only newsroom dedicated to covering gun violence.

You’re more likely to be shot in selma than in chicago.

Over the past decade, gun violence has expanded beyond the urban limits it is so often associated with, according to a Trace analysis of Gun Violence Archive data.

Go beyond the headlines.

Your weekly briefing on gun violence..

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In the fall of 2021, Summer Tatum, a radiology technician in Prattville, Alabama, was looking forward to the birth of her first child, a boy. She had already chosen a name, Everett.  

But by last October, Tatum’s young family was crumbling. She and her husband had been arguing for days over texts from another woman. At some point, her husband got ahold of her revolver. As she knelt on the floor and begged for her life, her husband shot her twice in the back of the head. Tatum died at the hospital. Everett was delivered but lived for only two hours.  

Tatum, 26, lived and died in a region of the country disproportionately beset by gun violence — the rural South. 

That’s according to our extensive analysis of data from the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit organization that tracks both gun injuries and deaths. The analysis shows that half of all shootings between 2014 and 2023 occurred outside large cities, in small cities and towns of fewer than 1 million people. Thirteen of the 20 towns and cities with the highest rates of shootings were located in the South, including Selma, Alabama — which had a per capita shooting rate that was higher than Chicago’s. 

A person living in a community like Tatum’s is more likely to be killed or injured in a shooting than someone living in Los Angeles or Baltimore.

“People generally think of gun violence as an urban issue, but we’re learning that is not always the case,” said Shani Buggs, a community violence researcher at the University of California, Davis. “There are rural areas with higher rates of gun violence than some urban areas.”

Around the country, more than 167,000 people were fatally shot between 2014 and 2023, according to GVA data, a decade of which is available for the first time. That’s nearly twice the number of American service members who have died in battle during all foreign wars since World War II. Another 324,000 people were injured by firearms. Gun deaths increased more than 50 percent and injuries increased 66 percent. 

To be sure, the largest number of shootings took place in large cities, however residents of smaller places with high per capita rates experience gun violence disproportionately.  

The states with the highest rates of shooting fatalities and injuries per 100,000 residents were Louisiana, Illinois, Mississippi, and Alabama. The lowest rates were in Hawaii, New Hampshire, and Maine.

The surge in shootings coincides with an unwinding of gun laws in several states. At the same time, guns have flooded the country in record numbers .

Shootings were already up from 2014 when COVID-19 struck, and then all types of locales experienced a significant spike that lasted through 2022. Larger places have seen the spike begin to subside, though gun violence mostly remains above pre-pandemic levels. In small towns and rural areas, however, rates are still going up.

The problem is worse in the South

Rural areas and large and small towns in the South have much higher levels of gun violence than their counterparts in other regions. In fact, less-populous places in the South have more shootings per capita than large cities that are commonly portrayed as among the most violent in America. 

Clarksdale, Mississippi; Selma, Alabama; and Laurinburg, North Carolina — each with a metro population of less than 100,000 people — were among the places that saw more people shot per capita last year than Chicago, Philadelphia, and Washington. 

Twelve towns and small cities in the South were among the top 20 metro areas with the most shooting victims per capita. Their rates, all of which were over 70 shooting deaths and injuries per 100,000 people, were more than six times the rate in New York City and five times the rate in Los Angeles.

Many Southern states have lax gun laws and are grappling with deeply entrenched racial segregation and the long shadow of Jim Crow. The South tends to have fewer social supports, higher rates of racial inequity, and more poverty than other regions.

Selma, Alabama — where the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., famously led a civil rights march in 1965 — had the highest rate of shooting deaths of any city anywhere last year.

“What we’ve seen in the last 10 years in the South is broadly a regression around addressing economic disparities and racial disparities,” said Buggs, the California community violence researcher, who is from Alabama. “There’s limited opportunity, there’s limited response to that limited opportunity, and so there’s just deprivation — and easy access to guns.”

It’s also bad in small cities

Alongside rural areas and towns in the South, small cities in the South and Midwest also saw high rates of gun violence compared to other regions. 

In the Midwest, cities with populations between 250,000 and 1 million endured more than 18 gun deaths or injuries per 100,000 people over the last decade. Similarly sized Southern cities had a rate of more than 20 per 100,000. During the same period, these cities in the South and Midwest had rates of gun violence nearly twice that of similarly sized cities in the West and Northeast.

Reggie Moore, the violence prevention policy and engagement director at the Medical College of Wisconsin’s Comprehensive Injury Center, says many shootings in Milwaukee, Indianapolis, and other Midwestern cities are acts of retaliation among groups of young people who have lost friends to violence. “They’re not organized, traditional street organizations. It’s not drugs,” Moore said. “It’s pain, disrespect, and rage ​​combined in young people between the ages of 13 and 24.”  

In Peoria, Illinois — a city made famous by Abraham Lincoln, who gave a speech there in 1854 — rates of gun death and injury more than doubled from 14.5 in 2014 to 37.2 in 2023 per 100,000 people, our analysis found. 

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After a 2023 shootout on a public street, the police chief blamed the city’s spike in violence on conflicts between groups of teenagers. He urged parents to keep a close eye on their children, and activities were canceled at some schools.

Here’s How We Analyzed 10 Years of GVA Data

In November, Peoria Community Against Violence, an organization that for nine years had provided assistance to shooting victims, was forced to close its doors. The Peoria County coroner, who had referred victims and their families to PCAV, told a local news station that it was now unclear who would offer them emergency support.  

In Wichita, Kansas, the number of people killed and injured per capita each year increased by 60 percent between 2014 and 2023, from 14.3 to 22.7.

In 2022, after a single weekend that saw 10 shootings, including one in which a teenager was killed at a graduation party, City Councilman Brandon Johnson begged the community for help. “I’m here because I am tired of seeing our young people die,” he said. “Guns do not have to be the answer.”

The Wichita Police Department attributed the high number of shootings to domestic violence. Advocates said economic stress and a lack of available assistance had led to a 60 percent increase in domestic violence shelter stays last year.

So what is the story of gun violence in America over the past decade?

Regardless of whether you live in a small town or a large city, if gun violence feels like it’s gotten worse over the past decade, that’s because it has. Between 2014 and 2023, shootings went up 40 to 60 percent in cities, 60 to 70 percent in small towns and rural areas, and 30 percent in suburbs. 

A Decade of Mass Shootings, By the Numbers

All types of gun violence rose over the past decade. Mass shootings — which GVA defines as incidents in which four or more people were shot — more than doubled between 2014 and 2023. (While they’re the most visible manifestation of American gun violence, mass shootings account for less than 5 percent of the nation’s gun violence toll.) 

That nearly one out of every two shootings we analyzed took place outside of large metro areas undermines the notion that gun violence is a big-city problem. 

As The Trace has previously reported , gun violence victims are often overlooked in less-populated areas and policymakers can reject measures that would help the situation under the mistaken assumption that the problem doesn’t exist there.

“This is everybody’s problem,” said Charles Branas, the chair of epidemiology at Columbia University’s School of Public Health. “We all need to get together on the issue if we really are going to make a difference.”

The data used in this story was assembled through a thorough analysis. Read our methodology here .

Clarification: This article was updated to specify that the number of American service members who have died in foreign wars refers exclusively to battle deaths and does not include other categories of military-related fatalities.

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Deadly shootings at bus stops: Are America's buses under siege from gun violence?

Millions of Americans like Adam Garber and his 5-year-old daughter ride a bus to work and school. But nowadays, it's not just a regular weekday public transit commute.

Instead of worrying if they will arrive on time, they worry if they will make it safely on the bus − or even if they come home alive.

"I feel like I have to be ready to grab her,” says Garber, 41, of Philadelphia. “I can’t enjoy her happiness, because I'm worried."

Across the U.S., headlines fuel that fear: In recent months, shootings on buses or at bus stops have led to deaths or serious injuries in Philadelphia, Washington, Seattle, Denver, Baltimore, San Francisco and New York. Though statistics are not kept on how many shootings occur in and around buses, one fact is certain: The shootings trigger national headlines and community worries.

Just last week, after eight high school students were shot at a Philadelphia bus stop, Garber said a wave of fear overtook him as he and his daughter rode together.

The buses in Philadelphia appeared emptier in the days after gunfire rang out around bus stops four times in four days, he said. People kept their heads down, and Garber remembered avoiding eye contact as he kept a close watch on his daughter.

“I keep my head down because some of the incidents are really driven by random interactions,” Garber said.

For most cities and regions across the U.S., buses are an integral part of daily life, taking millions of people to work, school and home. The U.S. Census Bureau reports that the nation's largest group of public transportation commuters − 46.3%, or 3.6 million people − use buses as their primary commuting mode.

Deadly shootings at bus stops and on buses leave indelible marks on communities. They are most often committed by angry people in the community and happen in poorer communities where it's more likely people rely on buses. The shootings also undermine confidence in public transportation and shine a light on bus safety and funding.

“Enough is enough,” Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker said after a 17-year-old boy, Dayemen Taylor, was shot and killed at a bus stop down the street from his school.

A local high school student was arrested in connection with a separate, unrelated shooting of eight students at a local bus stop, Omar Crowder, principal of Northeast High School in Philadelphia, wrote in a letter to families.

Connor Descheemaker, a coalition manager for Transit Forward Philadelphia, said the shootings bring uneasiness to public transit in general.

"Our buses, trains and trolleys are part of an ecosystem, connecting people to community and opportunity," Descheemaker said. "These shootings most recently connect to our underfunded public schools, at auto-centric intersections where cars with illegal plates were quickly able to enter and flee at high speeds. "

In one March week alone, a 17-year-old girl was shot and injured at a bus stop outside a high school in Seattle. Two men were shot and killed in Kansas City, Missouri, by a man who opened fire at a bus stop and inside a bus. And a 19-year-old girl was shot in Queens, New York.

Fear of shootings weighs on public spirit

Garber, who is executive director of the gun violence prevention advocacy group CeaseFirePA, said he has noticed people in Philadelphia engage with one another less than they used to when he first moved there in 2007, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic.

“You don't know who is carrying a firearm, and you don’t know what is going to trigger an attack,” he said. “So that fear and that concern has led to ... a shift in how people interact in public spaces like buses.”

Philadelphia communities are reeling from a series of shootings on its bus routes. In one incident, a throng of frightened teenagers ran screaming for cover after gunfire broke out at a bus stop, injuring eight high schoolers. Witnesses recalled rushing to the children wounded by gunshots as they bled on the street.

Resident Dan Nagy told CBS Philadelphia he and his neighbor Peter Cooper helped several of the fleeing teens into his apartment building before running back to the bus stop to help the wounded.

"To see the kids running and screaming and bleeding, it was like a little mini war zone, but children," Cooper said. "And children that couldn't protect themselves."

A spike in gun sales without safety training during the pandemic has meant more firearms in people’s hands that can transform a disagreement into a deadly shootout, Garber said. Though data on mass-transit shootings is extremely limited, news reports show some of the deadly bus shootings have been tied to gang violence and others stemmed from everyday disputes that drastically escalated.

In January, Denver police said a 13-year-old boy shot and killed a 60-year-old man on a city bus. Police said the incident began with an argument over the victim’s leg blocking the aisle. The boy was taken into custody and held for investigation for first-degree murder.

Sarah Burd-Sharps, senior director of research at Everytown for Gun Safety, said Americans have changed their way of life because of fear of gun violence in public places, from checking emergency exits in movie theaters to rethinking how to get to work.

A 2019 survey by the American Psychological Association found one-third of U.S. adults said fear of mass shootings kept them from going to certain places and events.

"Americans in general are increasingly changing our everyday behavior due to fear of gun violence in public places," Burd-Sharps said.

Unique security challenges on buses

A push for more lenient gun laws has also contributed to a rise in violence, Burd-Sharps said, noting Louisiana and South Carolina this month were the latest to pass permitless concealed carry laws. Though companies often have rules against bringing weapons onto buses, there’s no detector or method of enforcing the rule.

Having guns on buses, where people can be irritable and are confined to a small area, was a “recipe for harm,” she said.

Buses and other forms of mass transit pose unique security challenges compared with open spaces, said Jaclyn Schildkraut, executive director of the Regional Gun Violence Research Consortium at the Rockefeller Institute of Government. 

“In a mall, if gun violence erupts, there are plenty of ways you can go to try to escape the situation,” Schildkraut said. “In a bus or train, that is more difficult as you are in a small, enclosed space with numerous people who would also be trying to flee, which can slow down the ability to do so.”

Open spaces such as schools also have more layers of security such as a visitor management system and double-vestibule entry, she noted.

Gun violence at bus stops undermines trust in public transportation

"Americans who are lower-income, black or Hispanic, immigrants or under 50 are especially likely to use public transportation on a regular basis," the most recent Pew Research Center data shows .

Basav Sen, director of the Institute for Policy Studies Climate Justice Project, said gun violence at bus stops "is one further way in which our system of public transportation is uninviting to the public and it creates too many barriers for people to be able to ride it properly."

And the violence is most likely to affect people who can't afford cars or physically can't drive them, including people with disabilities.

Data from the American Public Transportation Association shows most transit riders are people ages 25 to 64. Seven percent of riders are 65 and older, and 14% of riders are younger than 25. School bus access is declining , leaving students who have to take public transit to school vulnerable to violence.

City data on mass transit crime

The Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, which operates mass transit systems in and around Philadelphia, reported a rise in aggravated assaults since the pandemic began, from 45 incidents in 2020 to 108 in 2023. Overall, crime on Philadelphia mass transit has remained relatively steady over the past four years, according to SEPTA.

In Chicago, transportation officials touted a drop in crime last year, though CBS 2 News reported some assaults remained elevated. Though homicides and robberies dropped significantly on Chicago Transit Authority vehicles, aggravated assaults and aggravated batteries rose slightly. The two offenses have increased sharply over the previous eight years, according to CBS 2, from a combined 82 offenses in 2015 to 213 offenses in 2023.

On New York City transit, police data shows overall crime has risen every year since the pandemic, from 3,411 complaints in 2020 to nearly 5,000 complaints in 2023.

Transit workers assaulted every day, union says

Public fear of crime at bus stops and other waiting areas for public transit is on the rise . Though many violent crimes are dropping back to pre-pandemic levels, transit authorities say assaults on their operators remain at unprecedented heights. 

Amalgamated Transit Union international president John Costa said he hears of attacks against operators very day. While shootings are less common than other types of violent assaults, Costa said gun-related offenses are also on the rise.

“A bus driver’s job 30 years ago was a lot different and a lot safer than it is today,” Costa said.

The mass transit industry has faced challenges hiring operators in recent years, Costa said, as more people opt to switch to other jobs in the company such as janitorial work to avoid the assaults.

ATU government affairs director Jeff Rosenberg said that while ridership for buses has largely bounced back, some routes have been emptier since the pandemic changed commuting patterns, leaving riders more isolated and potentially less safe. He also noted a shift in the feel on buses and trains to an atmosphere of "lawlessness."

"It's not like it used to be," he said.

Rosenberg noted some of the incidents have been tied to fare disputes as mass transit systems that used to be free before the pandemic now charge for tickets, angering some riders to the point of violence.

Dan Rodriguez, a spokesperson for Coach USA, said the company hadn’t faced instances of gun violence on its bus routes. 

“We have had incidents of other kinds of violence directed at our drivers and customers, but all were dealt with immediately by law enforcement,” Rodriguez said.

Greyhound did not respond to USA TODAY’s request for comment.

Community leaders advocate for preventative programs

After facing gunfire near Chicago bus stops five times as a teenager, Davosier Rutledge said, he feels paranoia enshroud him every time he boards a bus.

“Questions and scenarios play out in my head,” he said, and he takes note of every person who comes on board.

As a former gang member, Rutledge, 24, said the trauma from street shootings continues to affect him. When he’s with his children, Rutledge said, he never takes the bus out of fear for their safety. Even after leaving the gang, memories of gunfire near stops have stuck with him, but he continues to use the bus out of financial constraints.

Though some elected officials have bolstered law enforcement presence in response to a wave of transit crime, advocates say policing is only part of the solution.

In Virginia, community leaders said neighborhood violence led to shootings near bus stops every day in late 2022. After several parents expressed fear about their children getting caught in the crossfire as they came home from school, a local nonprofit stepped in.

In November 2022, New Virginia Majority launched a program to curb gun violence at buses and bus stops while kids were returning from school in Young Terrace and Calvert Square, two neighborhoods in Norfolk.

New Virginia Majority community organizer Javon Bennett said fights between warring groups in the neighborhoods had escalated to the point of shootings every day, and kids were caught in the gunfire as stray bullets shattered car windows and pelted storefronts. 

To deter the fights, volunteers from the communities go to the bus stop for a few hours in the morning and evening during the school commute times and keep an eye on the kids as they walk home. Since the program launched, Bennett noted there have been no shootings at the bus stops during the children’s commute times.

Contact Kayla Jimenez at [email protected] .  Follow her on X at @kaylajjimenez.